Bruin Bites: Pasquale’s Memorial Service, Key for Huskers’ Defense & UCLA as “Underdogs”

As mentioned previously for understandable reasons Coach Mora has closed practices for this game week.  That's why we don't have a lot of news coming out of Spaulding and not sure how much practice related notes we are going to get this week. So we will try to jot down football related notes (mini Bruin Bites) that we are seeing around the internets. Here are some of the notes worth highlighting from Tuesday:

• Jack Wang from Inside UCLA posted information on memorial services for Nick Pasquale. It is going to be held on this Sunday at San Clemente Presbyterian Church, beginning at 4 p.m.
• Some good news from Chris Foster on Damien Thigpen. Thigpen reportedly took another "step toward returning to game action." On Monday he was out of his red no-contact jersey at Spaulding and took in his first full-contract drills since last year's Beat $C game week. Not sure the coaches will bring him back this weekend but something to keep an eye out for next two weeks.
• Husker defensive coordinator John Papuchis thinks that the key for the Blackshirts against UCLA's offense will be to stop Brett Hundley and co. on 3rd downs. Last year the Bruins converted 9 of our 20 3rd down situations in the 36-30 win at the Rose Bowl.
• The national pundits we respect are not very optimistic about the Bruins' chances this Saturday.Yahoo!'s Pat Forde is picking Nebraska over UCLA (41-35) while SI.com's Stewart Mandel thinks Huskers' Taylor Martinez and running back Ameer Abdullah and company "could well make the Bruins' defense look silly." Ok then, Take note Coaches Mora, Spanos and co. I don't mind Bruins being underdogs in this game.

Also, don't forget - if you are looking to make plans to watch the games with other Bruins in your area uclaluv has the game-watching parties info. here. If you want to share information on game-watching parties from your town, feel free to share in that thread.

What else should we be taking note of? Fire up whatever information, observation you want to share re. UCLA football in this thread.

GO BRUINS.