An Embarrassing Night ...

"I have to give Rice a lot of credit..."

"That team is definitely on the way up..."

"Special teams was an issue today..." (no shit, Karl)

"We made some mistakes..." (no shit, Karl)

"We did some good things; we ran the ball better."

"It was a tough win...We have a lot to work on."

Karl, thanks for stating the obvious.  Nice insight.

Syracuse vs Iowa

It's too early too panic.

all of these games were very close.

Go Bruins!!!!!!

We'll get our running and passing game on the same level. By the time we play UW we should be alright.

Ben Olson struggled, everyone saw it. The question is why not run the ball? Well I have some issues with running the ball everytime. First of all, the offensive coordinator tried to establish the run and then pass on a roll out. Somehow the Rice defense sniffed out most of the pass plays.
Secondly, the biggest reason why this was not a blow out, WE DON"T HAVE MAURICE DREW. All that rushing but no one to take it to the house. Both Bell and Markey were being caught from behind.
Olson needs to protect the ball and think with the mentality to survive another down than go for it when there is no play at all.
The only good thing about this game was the defense. I don't care what you say about the opponent, the defense keeps showing improvement. If not for that late touch down on an option pitch play, Rice rushed a total of 11 yards. And for Bruin fans, that is a sign of improvement. The same team rushed for more yards last year. The defense kept this game from mirroring the Wyoming debacle.
Anyways, I just hope that the Bye week will be used for improvement and not M&M hand outs while bragging about new attitude.

It wasn't pretty but at least we won the game.  The turnovers were obviously the main issues in the game and overall we just didn't execute the way we should have on offense.  We weren't efficient on 3rd down and didn't convert redzone opportunities into touchdowns.  We moved the ball just fine I thought (only had to punt the ball once), just couldn't execute.

We all know how badly we played so here are some positive things I'm trying to take away from this game.

1) We still won by double digits (thank god) and it's over and in the past now

2) This has been a weird season so far and lots of middies and 1aa teams are stepping up to bigger programs and challenging them/winning outright, so this isn't just a UCLA issue

3) It's better that we get a bad game out of our system against at team like Rice than later on against our conference enemies

4) Almost nobody noticed, lol (the stands were damn near empty and I doubt anyone outside of Bruin fans bothered to watch)

5) Defense was great again and statistically we're the best D in the conference right now, #1 in both scoring and total D.  Cool.

6) We have two weeks to watch film, gameplan and try to correct everything that went wrong before we travel up to Washington.  Our coaches will probably step up the intensity of practice a few notches which probably wouldn't have happened if we just blew them off the field.  I think the easy win vs. Utah went to the players heads a bit.  It's clear this team plays better with something to prove.

Listen guys. I'm the furthest thing from an eternal optimist. But everyone has to...

RELAX. One mediocre game and everyone writes off the season? give me a fucking BREAK. I guess that means we have to write off FSU, Tennessee, Notre Dame (last week), Ohio State (they should have destroyed their opponent last week) and any other team who didn't have a perfect game.
and guys dissing the defense? are you guys serious???? I can't BELIEVE you guys are blaming this SOLID defense. Yeah they gave up a big play but the blame needs to be put squarely on special teams/defense. All those turnovers and UCLA's D gave up only 180 yards???? Even against a shit team like rice that's pretty impressive. And a goal line stand? When's the last time UCLA did that? the 18th century?

And as for the "medicore" performance by Ben, I'm not too phased. They were protecting the pass and look what happened to running lanes when they did: They gave up about 300 yards on the ground.

There is some things we need to work on. Special teams is a disaster right now, but you should all be able tell that there was a lot of experimentation going on tonight. I fully expect to kick Washington's ass when we play them. If not after this mediocre game, THEN I will be worried but I'm not ridiculous enough to say after one bad game the whole season should be writen off. jeez.

Like a lot of things in life, there are situations (Utah) that areen't as good as we thought and situations (Rice) that aren't as bad as we think.

I thought other than the one option play towards the end of the game that the defense played very well and bailed the offense out on a few occasions, including that goal line stand. When one play accounts for 58 of the 180+ total yards they got, that's pretty good defense regardless of who you play.

It is apparent that Ben needs more work than was probably thought after the Utah game. We will see Freshman types of mistakes from him along with great plays. We need to let him grow, let him learn from his mistakes and get better each week.
Nothing is better than game experience and he only has 2 whole games under his belt.

It was game 2 of a 12 game season with a lot of new players starting and gaining experience. I think this Bye comes at a perfect time, 2 games under our belt for the Coaches and players to sort the proverbial fly shit from the pepper.

That's my view from my seats at the Rose Bowl.