The 2010 season is over for the UCLA football team.
The Bruins (4-7, 2-6 Pac-10) hung on to it for weeks and weeks until all the hope had been squeezed dry. But what’s dead only exists in the past. This is something new.
Welcome to the Dec. 4 season of UCLA football. It’s a one-game schedule, a win or a loss meaning absolutely nothing except for that weighty feeling that sits in the gut for 12 long months.
The opponent, of course, is the University of Southern California. With bowl game glory not even a mirage on the horizon for either program after Saturday’s game at the Rose Bowl, each team is all the other has left.
“I look at this game as kind of a mini season unto itself,” UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel said. “It’s cliche to say you throw out the records, but I think everybody does find a unique way to focus on this game, leaving the past behind.”
Apparently, both of these squads are more than happy to start fresh. In fact, this is the first game of the rivalry since 1980 in which neither team has at least some bowl hopes on the line.
The Bruins have lost five of their last six games, prompting Neuheisel to label the season a disappointment, as such a season would be at many a Division I program.
A quick skim of the Trojans’ (7-5, 4-4) 2010 results might not look that bad. If they weren’t serving a two-year postseason ban as part of an NCAA suspension for “lack of institutional control,” the team’s seven victories could have sent them to a respectable bowl game.
But some teams just have different standards. First-year USC head coach Lane Kiffin, who spent six seasons on the Trojan staff during the program’s most recent heyday, has those kinds of standards for his team.
“A heartbreaking season is the best way to describe it,” Kiffin said. “Obviously, we wanted to win more games, especially for our seniors, who have already had so much taken away from them out of their control.”
Those sentiments may also be fueled by the Trojans’ current two-game skid, including a fourth-quarter defeat at the hands of non-conference rival Notre Dame last weekend, but starting with a 36-7 blowout loss to Oregon State a week earlier.
“We were horrible,” Kiffin said in the days following the game against the Beavers. “I can’t even fathom that we scored seven points.”
In that game, Kiffin also lost his starting quarterback, sophomore Matt Barkley, to a high ankle sprain. Redshirt senior Mitch Mustain stepped in to replace him last weekend but threw for just 177 yards and an interception against the Fighting Irish.
Barkley practiced lightly with the team on Tuesday, and indications from Kiffin make it seem as if he will be back leading the Trojans when they take the field in Pasadena on Saturday night, though it is not yet official.
Neuheisel said he thought the Trojans would be running a similar offense regardless of which passer would be out there. Redshirt junior linebacker Akeem Ayers, one of the Bruins asked to corral the Trojan playmakers, agreed.
“Whoever their quarterback is, they still have the same players, and they’re still capable of putting up a lot of points,” Ayers said.
If USC has a weakness, it might be its passing defense, which has given up 29 touchdowns and yields an average of 262 yards a game. Both marks are the worst in the Pac-10. For most of the season, UCLA’s air attack might not have been poised to capitalize on such numbers, but despite the loss last week, the Bruins put together their best passing numbers of the season.
Sophomore quarterback Richard Brehaut returned from his concussion to throw for a career-high 321 yards and three touchdowns, connecting with junior wideouts Nelson Rosario and Taylor Embree nine times each in the Bruins’ last game against ASU.
But UCLA’s defense was too much of a liability for that to matter.
“When you’ve got some coverage mistakes, and you’ve got poor tackling going on in the same ball game, it’s going to get you, and unfortunately this time it did,” Neuheisel said.
The Bruins actually bested Kiffin and members of his coaching staff when they defeated his Tennessee team a year ago. Though Neuheisel denied any current significance in that victory, he said Kiffin still runs a similar offense to the one he did in Knoxville, but that his Southern California version has more weapons.
“I’ve seen them play a number of times and have been very impressed with how explosive they can be,” Neuheisel said.
Despite all the sanctions and coaching changes that have happened in the last year over on the campus off Figueroa Street, the UCLA players denied paying much attention.
“We don’t really care about ‘SC, how they do,” redshirt sophomore and starting tailback Johnathan Franklin said. “We hope they lose every game, but we just worry about them the week we’re playing them.”