A light-hearted story about a quarterback missing a tooth with a dentist dad who could fix it evolved into a nightmare for coach Rick Neuheisel and his football team when the coach got a call at around noon today.
X-rays that were originally precautionary in nature revealed that UCLA’s starting redshirt freshman quarterback Kevin Prince suffered a fractured right jaw in the team’s 19-15 win over Tennessee.
A day of jubilation turned overnight into a day full of questions for a team who plays Kansas State next week and has yet to name a new starter.
“(Offensive coordinator Norm Chow) and I will talk and we’ll watch practice and we’ll go from there,” Neuheisel said.
“You’ve got an experienced player in Kevin Craft who has played a lot of football,” Neuheisel said. “You have a very young kid (Brehaut) who played pretty well last week in a brief stint against San Diego State. I wouldn’t be surprised if both got to play.”
Prince suffered the injury that will keep him out three to four weeks on a late-in-the-game play call by Neuheisel that resulted in a hard hit.
With less than two minutes remaining and the Bruins up 19-13, UCLA faced a critical third-down play literally inches from their own end zone. Rather than calling for a quarterback sneak or a run play to take more time off the clock ““ Tennessee had no timeouts ““ Neuheisel elected to try to go for the win by trying to get a first down.
Prince bootlegged to the right after a play-action fake and got hit in the end zone before he could get his throw away. In what Neuheisel called “a bang-bang play,” Prince was hit by a Tennessee defender knocking his jaw out of place.
“They were out of time outs, so if you make a first down, the game is over,” Neuheisel said. “The risk was “˜Kevin, you’re not throwing this ball unless a guy is wide open. You’re not going to fumble. And all I want to do if there is no one open is try to get back outside the line of scrimmage. So we still have our 40 seconds. But if you can’t, I understand, and we’ll punt.'”
“Now had you told me I was going to lose my quarterback, I think I would have gone with your quarterback sneak. But that did not factor into my mind.”
The injury comes a season after UCLA lost both its starting quarterback and backup in 2008. But Neuheisel said that he didn’t think the Bruins’ recent history would impact the team’s morale.
“This is a different edition of UCLA football and I think we’re going to weather it,” Neuheisel said.
“I think it’s a blip in the radar.”