The Morning After, Part 8: California

  Perhaps for the first time this year, I saw new life in the defense. They were flying around the field and making big hits and sure tackles. After Cal’s opening drive for a TD, the Bruin defense held them without a score if not for the silly turnover in the 3rd quarter mishandling a punt return by James that gave Cal short field position. 24 of 31 Bruin points were scored off of turnovers created by the Bruin defense. True, Maynard helped a lot with his inaccuracy. But the Bruin defense looked fast and hungry. I think last night was Joe Tresey fighting for his job.

  On offense, the Cal defense was totally leaving the QB Prince all alone and going for the running back on every run fake. It seemed like it took a while for UCLA and Prince to catch on, but once they did, it was off to the races for Prince. Nice running job by Prince.

Perhaps this is the difference between facing the Lucks, Keenums, and Foles, and lining up against what has to be the worst QB in the conference? Maynard’s performance was awful – predictably so for anyone who has caught Cal’s televised efforts earlier this Season. Is Utah really that bad? How did Cal get 34 points last week?

The Donut denies it, but Boise St just fattened his contract. May be true.

The Lizard would routinely follow up an embarrassing loss with an unexpected win during his unfortunate tenure at UCLA. In my mind, wins like this make the previous losses look even worse as they demonstrate the talent and potential of the players on the team. This win means nothing and changes nothing – wholesale regime change is still the way to go.

I do have to give it up to the players, though – they played hard yesterday and they played smart. Our front 7 was able to get pressure on Cal’s QB and that pressure led to several of Cal’s TOs. Stupid penalties were at a minimum (we had 4 penalties for 31 yards). Locke seemed to just kick the ball better and farther after he got hurt. And while our passing game was mostly absent, KP played a smart game at QB with some great reads in the run game. He even got the O lined up in time on every play – it was the first game all year where we haven’t had to burn timeouts because of confusion on O! (Of course, Slick Rick managed his “2 minute offense” like he didn’t have any timeouts but hey, that’s not on KP). Way to represent the 4 letters, fellas!

Kendricks and Olaniyan are RS Fr (graduated HS in 2010)

Hats off to the team and yes, the coaches, for a solid wine, best game of the year for the Bruins. We didn’t seem to miss all the benched stars at all. Kevin P did not play safe or scared and got 163 yards rushing and executing the pistol to perfection. And the defense was solid. So take a deep breath and remember that Arizona was one game, a bad one, and the other seven were pretty bad too, but this game was very good.

Even though Cal is not a good team, they might not have scored at all had we not fumbled and dropped the punt return. Your post mentioned all the good things about our young players, but Prince, Colemen, and Lock played a good game, they should deserve a lot of credits as well. This game definitely has shown that we are a much better team with the young linebackers.

to Wade Yandall for playing a solid game. I just watched the replay and he was real physical at the point of attack. I can’t stand the pistol offense but it was the right formula to beat Cal last night. We were missing a few receivers so we had to pound the ball down Cal’s throat. This was the best effort by the offensive line of the entire season.

What the heck was up with the students doing a “flash mob” routine of Lady Gaga between the 3rd and 4th quarters? This may fly for women’s gymnastics, but myself and most alumni in my area were just shaking our heads for the duration of the song.

We don’t really have a quarterback who can effectively throw the ball downfield, so he is forced into a more conservative stance.

Obviously this win doesn’t mean much in terms of the bigger picture, but it is still nice that we had some good individual performances and the players showed a little bit of spark.

Not wishing to be negative on a sunny Sunday, but I don’t think it is correct to argue ‘based on that game, clearly Tevin McDonald should be playing more – he had 3 picks!!’

The picks he had weren’t the result of making a great play, playing great coverage, getting a jump on the receiver etc – they were flat-out horrible throws, as evidenced by the fact he was able to run around for a few seconds afterwards with no Cal player anywhere near him. Aaron Hester had a great INT under pressure from the receiver; Tevin had his gift-wrapped by Maynard.

And we’ve seen how Tevin has been picked on by opponents this year when in the game – IEAngel’s excellent 3rd-down-vs-WSU post noted that 5 of the 3rd down conversions were on passes where it was Tevin’s responsibility to break it up.

He’s a good kid, he’s young, he has talent and has a promising future, and I’m not trying to be harsh towards him here. But taking this game and implying that on the basis of this game he should be getting more time ahead of Tony Dye and that his lack of playing time is an indictment on the coaching staff just seems out of keeping with the analysis and analytic grounding of this community. Again, I don’t want to be harsh towards Tevin, but I think it’s unfair to Tony Dye to misrepresent the greatness of Tevin McDonald. And I get that this falls into a broader sense that CRN isn’t playing the right guys – but you can’t make that criticism without undermining the other guys who also deserve our support. I guess all I mean to say in this is that out of fairness to all players, we shouldn’t exaggerate performances of the guys with whom they are competing for playing time.

First congrats to the Bruin players and coaches for getting up off the the mat and getting it done….special thanks to #87 from Cal, whose cheap shot on the Bruins punter seemed to light a fire for UCLA.

However, as the game played out. I found myself more interested in how Cal has gone from conference contender that used to challenge SC to bottom-feeder so quickly…….Is MAC refugee Zach Maynard really better than any of your QB recruits ? Or is he playing to keep half-brother Keenan Allen happy ? It’s not a good situation either way. This was the first game in a long long time that UCLA clearly had the edge in QB play…..I thought Cal had the better players Saturday night, and with the depleted UCLA receivers corps, should have been able to counter the limited UCLA offense, yet they made the same mistakes repeatedly……I know they have a lot of young players, but has anyone begun to seriously question Tedford and his staff ? They seemed to have gotten a ton of leeway from beating SC ten years ago, and it seems that if any heat develops, someone says “Tom Holmoe” and they immediately give him a contract extension, and thanks him profusely for remaining in Berkeley…….

…..Not trying to rub it in, Bear fans (losing to UCLA is bad enough), but just curious as to how the burden of an consistently underachieving football team is being handled, in contrast to the daily soap opera here at UCLA…… We also have a coach whom almost everyone likes personally, but can’t deliver results……Is Tedford vulnerable ? If not, why ? I guarantee that every Cal player walking off that field last night felt they had the better team and should have won……

This thread is kind of relevant as it’s talking about giving other players playing time, so I’ll ask here, what are people’s thoughts on Franklin? I’ve read and/or heard that he has the homerun threat and he’s basically been the starter whenever he’s available. I just haven’t seen it. I remember the big TD run against $c last year, but that’s really about it. I can’t remember him out running anyone. And he has the added risk of fumbling.

Coleman seems to be a much more solid and consistent back to me, and he never seems to fumble. The only fumble I can recall, as a matter of fact, is when he was hit and got a concussion. Quite understandable in that situation.

Plus, with Franklin getting less time, Malcolm Jones could see more carries. I’d love to see what kind of potential he has. So far he’s been given next to no opportunities.