I am sure by now everyone has read the following comments from Christian Taylor leading up to the Florida State game (emphasis ours throughout):
"If we lose this game, then the SC game meant nothing," UCLA junior middle linebacker Christian Taylor said. "To me, that's the biggest thing. We've won our last few games, but if we lose our last game of the season, we're not going in the right direction heading into the off-season.
"It can be a wake-up call, but it's not what you want. It's not good for anything. ... It's not good for notoriety. It's not good for preseason rankings. It's not good for recruiting. It's not good for the overall mentality of your program."
I have not seen any followup on Taylor after the game. If anyone has seen anything, please post it in this thread. This could be an interesting issue for Dohnster to followup on his blog. Nothing on this on his blog yet. Although Dohn has given out his grades for the FSU game and the mark for coaching staff is not pretty:
"It can be a wake-up call, but it's not what you want. It's not good for anything. ... It's not good for notoriety. It's not good for preseason rankings. It's not good for recruiting. It's not good for the overall mentality of your program."
Coaching
The Bruins played hard, but there wasn’t the intense emotion needed to win this game. The offensive game plan was strong in the first half, but Florida State made better halftime adjustments. Ditto for the defense, and blocked punts are usually a product of coaching.
Grade: D
Again, as I said below, we have seen this from Dorrell and his mediocre staff before. Nothing new here. Oh, BTW, Brian also had this leading up to last night:
The Bruins played hard, but there wasn’t the intense emotion needed to win this game. The offensive game plan was strong in the first half, but Florida State made better halftime adjustments. Ditto for the defense, and blocked punts are usually a product of coaching.
Grade: D
UCLA is treating this bowl practice session like it is training camp. The Bruins are doing a lot of hitting, and working rapidly. A few of the players I spoke with said it was the toughest bowl practice sessions they've had, and the guys I was talking to were upperclassmen. There is real motivation from the coaching staff to build off the USC win, and not fall flat against Florida State. I've been covering UCLA since coach Karl Dorrell's first season, and I can tell how much a win in this game means to him.
Yeah, so much for the spin coming from delusional Dorrell supporters, who are trying to spin this loss as a "meaningless" one.We'd like to see some follow up from Dohn. It'd be nice if the best beat reporter (then again, competition is not all that stiff given the coverage and quaility of what passes for "reporting" we get from the So. Cal. media) hold the figures/characters who they are covering accountable for what they say or project. It'd be nice to see some followup. Those were tough words from Christian and, once again, lots of Bruins fans were suckered by stories of great practice reports. Like I said, we are getting tired of the same damn script.
GO BRUINS.