Three years ago, the UCLA football team strolled into Austin, Texas, and unseated then-No. 7 Texas, 34-12, in front of roughly 100,000 fans in perhaps the biggest victory of then-coach Rick Neuheisel’s UCLA career.
On Saturday, the Bruins will be confronted with their greatest road test since that 2010 stunner when they head to Lincoln, Neb., to take on the No. 23 Nebraska Cornhuskers (2-0), a rematch of a 36-30 UCLA victory at the Rose Bowl last season.
But to senior defensive end Cassius Marsh, who was just a freshman during that trip to Austin, even a tradition as historic as Nebraska’s is just another game on the schedule.
“They’re a storied program, and it’s going to be a great game,” Marsh said. “You just have to realize it’s just like any other game, the only difference is they’re wearing red jerseys and it’s all red shirts in the stadium.”
With a small dose of irony, Nebraska will be unveiling its black alternate uniforms specifically for the UCLA game, a move that redshirt sophomore wide receiver Devin Lucien said will give him a little extra energy heading into Saturday.
“Me personally, I go in thinking to make them shut up, make them be quiet,” Lucien said. “They said they wore those uniforms because of us. I already know that they sell out their stadium every game, so that’ll motivate me even more to put on a show.”
UCLA’s wide receiving corps, with Nebraska’s attire in mind, will look to leave a mark on the Cornhusker secondary, which features Jim Thorpe Award watch list honoree senior cornerback Ciante Evans.
In the team’s season opener against Nevada, UCLA’s wide receivers managed to haul in two touchdowns on 302 receiving yards, but were upstaged by the Bruins’ running attack, which exploded for five touchdowns. Lucien said that while Nevada ran a defense favorable to the team’s run game, come Saturday the result for the receivers will improve.
“I think we could’ve had a lot more yards than what showed. Nevada was playing off. They were playing a cover two invert, so we weren’t able to get the ball as much,” Lucien said. “(Nebraska’s) going to run something that we can spread the field with and get the ball in everyone’s hand, so I’m excited.”
The primary ball carrier for Nebraska will likely be Taylor Martinez, a senior dual-threat quarterback who worked the No. 16 Bruins (1-0) for 112 yards and a touchdown in the teams’ last meeting.
More recently, UCLA faced Nevada quarterback Cody Fajardo, a running quarterback in the mold of Martinez that ran for six fewer yards against UCLA’s defense just two weekends ago. Coach Jim Mora said the Nebraska game will give his team a sense as to whether its postgame corrections from Nevada have made enough of an impact over the last two weeks.
“The question is that Taylor Martinez is an outstanding running quarterback and the kid that played against us Saturday night had some success against us,” said Mora of Fajardo. “So have we made improvements there enough to slow down Taylor?”
In five days, that question of whether the Bruins can handle one of college football’s top running quarterbacks will be answered.
