In the week-plus since Olson was named the Bruins' starting quarterback, the Bruins' West Coast offense has been sharper, the reads and throws coming on time and on target more often than not.

"Knowing that you're going to get more reps makes you kind of slow down and you can really take your time" Olson said. "I know it sounds weird, but you can take your time and go through the plays and you go through more plays, so you're seeing more plays, you're seeing different defenses for that play and it just all kind of works in your favor. ....[...]

"We really challenged him in camp, and I like to do that simply because you have the big picture in mind," UCLA offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Jim Svoboda said. "We wanted to expose them to the things that we're going to need the length of the season, so it was a lot. ... What's nice now is you're going to have a condensed group of plays that you're going to be preparing for Utah.

"But I think now he's probably considerably ahead (of the curve), simply because we've required more out of him. Last year at this time, we were splitting reps between four guys and so, by virtue of that, you can't put a lot of things in. There were things we had and he executed very well, but had we just stayed with that group of plays that wouldn't have served us the whole length of the season. This year we accelerated that process a little bit, with the hope that it would pay dividends down the road."

And Olson believes that he is ready to push back. The schedule up front is not too demanding - Utah in the opener is the only team the Bruins will play in the first five weeks of the season that had a winning record. The Utes were ranked only 59th of 117 Division I teams last season in total defense, followed by Rice (110th), Washington (94th), Stanford (105th) and Arizona (86th).