The Wildcats haven’t won a game in over two years.
Wins or not, coach Chip Kelly said the Bruins still have a challenge ahead of them.
“The team is competitive and they play very hard,” Kelly said. “The kids know we’re going to get everything we get when we go down there on Saturday night.”
UCLA football (3-2, 1-1 Pac-12) will travel to Tucson to take on Arizona (0-4, 0-1) in its second road contest of the season. The Wildcats last won against Colorado on Oct. 5, 2019 and have since lost their last 16 contests – tying them for the longest current losing streak in the NCAA.
After going 0-5 in 2020, Arizona replaced former coach Kevin Sumlin with Jedd Fisch, who served as UCLA’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017 before becoming the interim coach after Jim Mora was fired.
While Fisch was able to capture a win in his two tries as the Bruins’ coach, he hasn’t followed the same track with Arizona, losing his first four games as the Wildcats’ head coach.
Senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson – who was recruited partially by Fisch back in 2017 – said the coach’s offense rivals that of an NFL offense, even if it hasn’t resulted in wins on the collegiate level.
“It’s a real NFL-style offense (and it) has a lot of similarities to stuff that they run on Sundays,” Thompson-Robinson said. “(Fisch) really knows how to get his quarterbacks to do whatever he wants them to do.”
While Fisch has yet to emerge victorious this season, Arizona has won the yardage battle in three of its games – including in its most recent game against No. 8 Oregon. The Wildcats outgained the Ducks 435 yards to 393 and were only down by five points entering the fourth quarter versus the conference’s highest-ranked team.
“You never want to underestimate a team – you can kind of see that in the Oregon film,” Thompson-Robinson said. “Those guys underestimated them a little bit and then got after them in the second half so it made that game close. So we can’t do the same, we got to learn from their mistake.”
Fisch has used three signal-callers so far this season – Gunner Cruz, Will Plummer and Jordan McCloud. Cruz and Plummer were named co-starters to open the campaign, but McCloud was the only quarterback used in Arizona’s loss to Oregon and has since been named the full-time starter.
McCloud threw for 233 yards and a touchdown in his debut start against the Ducks, but also was picked off five times. Even with the turnovers, the former USF quarterback ran for 64 yards on nine carries, and Kelly said McCloud’s mobility is the most dangerous part of his game.
“The kid right now from South Florida is dynamic from a legs standpoint, so he can beat you running the football too,” Kelly said. “We have to prepare for it.”
Like Arizona, UCLA is also coming off of a loss – a 42-23 defeat at the hands of No. 22 Arizona State at home. The 19-point margin marked the largest loss for the Bruins since 2019, as they were shut out in the second half by Arizona’s Pac-12 partner school.
Senior linebacker Bo Calvert said last week’s loss was not representative of UCLA, but added after Monday’s practice that it served as a wake-up call for the Bruins as they prepared to take on the winless Wildcats.
“We had sort of an off night on Saturday, but on any given Saturday, any team can win and any team can lose – that’s just football,” Calvert said.
