Spaulding Roundup: Kendricks’s Surgery, Shaky Quarterback Depth, XSF’s NFL Decision & Other UCLA Notes

Hope everyone is having a great start to the Holiday season. Bruins wrapped up their practice at Spaulding for this year (before heading for El Paso) on Saturday. The big news out of Spaulding is the surgery of Eric Kendricks (fanshotted by Bruins#1).

While stars like Anthony Barr, Myles Jack et al grab all the headlines, there is no doubt who is the heart and soul of the Bruin defense.  Not having Eric for the Sun Bowl is a big loss for the Bruins, but hopefully our talented backup should be able to step up. From the LA Times:

Linebacker Eric Kendricks had successful ankle surgery Friday. Mora said that the junior "should be weight bearing in a couple days." Kendricks is expected to be ready for spring practice, though he may be in limited workouts.

"The prudent thing to do is to take it slow and make sure he is at full speed for summer," Mora said. "But you know Eric. He will be wanting to push through it."

Kendricks hurt the ankle in spring practice last season and had surgery in the summer. He started every game this season, but Mora said, "he was in tremendous
pain all season."

The decision to get the surgery came "after a lot of back and forth," Mora said. "The general consensus was he needed to get it done sooner rather than later."

Freshman LB Isaac Savaiinaea is going to get the call for the Bruins. Isaac is a talented LB (a blue chip recruit), who struggled a bit when he had to step in for Kendricks in few plays this year. But hopefully, after going through an entire regular season, and extra week of bowl practice, he will be ready to go. As Foster mentioned his notes, Bruins will probably also deploy nickel packages to compensate for Eric's loss.

Elsewhere, Jack Wang posted couple of videos worth the clicks on his blog - Inside UCLA:

First, Freshman QB Asiantii Woulard talked about his development while redshirting in his first year at UCLA.

Right now everyone is crossing their fingers for number 17 to come back for another year. But If Hundley decides to pull a Tommy Maddox, it's scary thing to Woulard is going to head into our season as the starter with Jerry Neuheisel backing him. This puts even more urgency on the QB recruiting situation for this year and raises question about what exactly the Mazzones have been doing since their arrival in Westwood. Bruins have to get someone like Brad Kaaya into the fold this year, otherwise the depth at QB is going to be a massive question mark heading into next years. Lack of QB depth killed Bob Toledo's program at UCLA even after a 20 game win streak. Hopefully Mora and his staff don't make the same mistakes.

Second, OL coach Adrian Klemm had an interesting give and take with the reporters on wide range of topics related to the state of our OL.

From what I saw in that video - I get the sense that Klemm is not expecting XSF to come back for his senior season in Westwood.

Lastly, speaking of XSF Ralph Irvin has a roundup of all the post-season awards for the Bruins during this bowl-season:

Ralph's roundup features comments from Anthony Barr, Xavier Su'a Filo, Myles Jack, Eddie Vanderdoes, Alex Redmond, assistant coach Jeff Ulbrich, who was recognized as one of the best ST coaches in the country.

GO BRUINS.