UCLA Football Had a Rough Practice On Friday

Perhaps, the Bruins were thrown off kilter by the change in practice time yesterday as UCLA moved up the time to 4:30 pm from the originally scheduled 7:15 pm. I sure missed the tweet about it and didn’t get to practice until the very end.

What I did see was that Coach Mora was not pleased with Nate Meadors and Octavius Spencer. I was only able to hear some of what Mora was saying to the pair while the team held its post-practice huddle and what I could hear I cannot publish in a family publication like Bruins Nation. In fact, if I had video of the event, I might have to bleep every other word or every third word.

But I couldn’t quite make out exactly what Mora was upset about.

Ben Bolch of the LA Times appears to explain it as a “tough day for the younger guys.” Bolch writes:

Mora called it “a tough day for the young guys” after players completed summer finals, finishing the portion of training camp in which they had to deal with both football and schoolwork. He was visibly upset with defensive backs Octavius Spencer and Nate Meadors when the team gathered after practice. “I think mentally, it’s tough,” Mora said. “It’s fatiguing to them. But I’m proud of them for how they pushed through it and I think they’ll be better for it. But it’ll be nice to get into a normal training camp routine.”

While Ben normally does a good job covering the team, I don’t really believe this explains what happened. That’s because in the context of his post-practice interview, Mora seems to be referring to the new freshmen when talking about things. At least, that’s how I took it as I watched the video of the post-practice presser. But, I could be wrong.

It does seem to have been a tough day all over, though. Thuc Nhi Nguyen of Inside Socal notes that the number two defense had a hard time lining up and that the number one offense got kicked off the field for not lining up fast enough and then got called back when they didn’t get off the field fast enough, only to be kicked off again.

She also mentions that Josh Rosen continued to struggle. While throwing several nice passes for touchdowns, he also missed a bunch of passes as well. While that could certainly be just getting the rust off, Rosen’s accuracy has been a concern since Spring Football where I observed that he seems to have a tendency to overthrow some of his targets.

Hopefully, he can get that straightened out in time for Texas A&M.

Theo Howard continued to impress on Friday, according to Thuc Nhi. That builds on some nice work both Wednesday and Thursday nights.

We have a video of the drillwork the team did yesterday, thanks to Edward Lewis of the Bruins Sports Report. Ed shot video of the offensive and defensive line one-on-one’s yesterday.

And, finally, thanks to Matt Joye of Bruin Report Online for posting the video of Coach Mora’s post-practice interview.

After watching that again, Mora definitely is talking about the new freshmen at the beginning of the interview and not Meadors or Spencer.

The Bruins’ next practice is scheduled for this afternoon at 3:15 pm.


Go Bruins!