Posted: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:46 PM - 8,249 Readers
By: Eli Smukler
A thunderstorm was expected to hit Austin on Saturday afternoon, but it stayed sunny right up until the final whistle.
The UCLA football team was supposed to get pummeled Saturday, too.
The fans waited and waited, but it never came.
Instead, the Bruins decided to make their own rain.
UCLA (2-2) shocked a previously undefeated No. 7 Texas (3-1) team, and possibly the entire Lone Star state, with a 34-12 victory in front of 101,437 fans at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
“I just believed if we could go in there and fight, our guys would start to feel it and once you feel it, you become dangerous,” UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel said. “Hopefully, that’s what we are. We’re dangerous now.”
Those were words few had expected to hear just two weeks ago when Neuheisel’s team was blown out 35-0 at the Rose Bowl by Stanford to drop to 0-2 with two more games against ranked teams remaining in September.
But after Saturday, after kneeling the ball for the final time, after witnessing a small cluster of top-deck UCLA fans eight-clap in post-upset euphoria, after dousing their coach in a raucous visiting locker room, after all that, the Bruins have made much of the improbable seem possible.
“I’m so proud of my team right now,” redshirt sophomore cornerback Aaron Hester said. “This is big for us, big for our program, big for recruiting, big for everything. I’m pretty sure there’s little kids out there watching, wanting to be a Bruin now.”
The first half of the game was an offensive mess for both teams, in which turnovers and penalties reigned. Texas fumbled three times in the first half alone, including a botched punt return that UCLA recovered on the Longhorns’ four-yard line.
Soon after, redshirt sophomore quarterback Kevin Prince found redshirt freshman wide receiver Ricky Marvray in the endzone on a one-yard buttonhook for the Bruins’ first score. But those direct hits were rare for the UCLA air game.
That touchdown was Prince’s first completed pass of the day. He only had four more after that.
“If you would have told me that, I would have been scared coming into this game,” Prince said. “(But) it doesn’t matter to me. If we win with me going into the fourth quarter with six yards passing, that’s fine with me. I just want to win.”
The aggressive Bruin defense kept supplying the field position, and redshirt senior kicker Kai Forbath kept adding to his career field goal total – now at 78 despite a 49-yard miss – so UCLA went into the half leading 13-3.
But the game’s turning point came after the break, when the Bruin offense began to take off. UCLA marched down the field with an eight-play, 80-yard drive that ended with redshirt sophomore tailback Johnathan Franklin barging his way into the endzone from 11 yards out and pushing the lead to 20-3.
“You can’t say there was a bigger drive since I was at UCLA,” Neuheisel said later.
The Bruin possession showcased what was perhaps the most impressive aspect of the win – that UCLA beat Texas by attacking its strongest unit.
The Longhorns boasted the best rushing defense in the nation coming into the game, giving up an average of just 44 yards per game. The Bruins went off for 264.
While the UCLA passing game floundered in its ongoing struggle to find a rhythm, offensive coordinator Norm Chow and the Bruins decided to chuck the plan and go with what was working.
“(The running game) was vital,” Franklin said. “We didn’t have much of a passing game, so at times the running backs had to put the offense on their back. I feel, as a whole, we did that today.”
Franklin had his second straight terrific game, gaining 118 yards and solidifying his position as the team’s de facto biggest offensive threat.
The Longhorns responded to Franklin’s score with a field goal, but the Bruins put it away on the next possession.
Sneaking out on the option play that has worked so well for him in the last two weeks, Prince broke away for a 38-yard touchdown run that essentially sealed the game with a quarter still left to play. Prince ran for more yards on that one play than he threw for the entire game (27 total pass yards), but with the running game rolling so well, it simply didn’t matter.
Although Texas quarterback Garrett Gilbert managed a touchdown pass with 2:28 left in the game to make it 27-12, the ensuing two-point conversion and on-sides kick both failed. The score was nullified, too, when junior running back Derrick Coleman scored on a 19-yard run with less than a minute left.
In the week leading up to the game, Neuheisel had brushed off comparisons to the Bruins’ last visit to Austin in 1997, a classic upset in which an 0-2 UCLA team clobbered a highly-ranked Texas team, 66-3. That victory sparked a 20-game win streak over two seasons, and now the current team can’t help but wish for a little bit of the old magic.
“Obviously the last time we did this as a program, it started a big thing,” Prince said. “We’re kind of hoping for the same results.”
It wasn’t a conference game. It wasn’t a rivalry game. It didn’t push the victor into BCS contention or even a winning record. But for the UCLA football team’s September dreams, it doesn’t get much sweeter than this.
“What we mustered up in the way of pride and dedication to each other can’t be lost just because we get to enjoy a wonderful victory,” Neuheisel said. “We’ve got to keep whatever that feeling was as our energy to get better and hopefully continue to improve as a football team as we get back now into the Pac-10 conference.
“But for a night it is a great win and it’s fun to see those kids have that kind of celebration.”
