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--> UCLA's offense misfires again
12:49 AM PDT on Sunday, September 12, 2010
By JIM ALEXANDER
The Press-Enterprise
PASADENA - Officially, it is the Pistol offense, this hybrid of the spread and the veer that the UCLA Bruins run.
Unofficially?
Among the nicknames being batted around late Saturday night was Popgun. Or Water Pistol. Or Bow and Arrow. Or ... wait, they used spears in the Stone Age, didn't they?
Yes, UCLA's offense looked positively prehistoric in Saturday night's 35-0 loss to Stanford. A measly 81 yards passing, 233 yards total offense, just 23:09 time of possession and a boatload of mistakes, some of them devastating at points when the Bruins still had a shot at making it close.
Rick Neuheisel had another description, and it wasn't a joke.
"Tonight was an offensive disaster," he said. "There's no other way to describe it."
Maybe his miscalculation helped set up this disaster.
When installing a new offense,
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010, the ideal is for your No. 1 quarterback to have as much time getting comfortable with it as possible.
But Bruins' sophomore Kevin Prince didn't have that time, missing much of fall camp because of a strained oblique muscle.
Should Neuheisel have gone to Richard Brehaut? The public seems to think so; when Prince (6 of 12 for 39 yards with an interception and two sacks) came out Saturday night and Brehaut came in, the fans remaining from the crowd of 56,931 cheered wildly.
"We've got 29 practices going to the first game, and he (Prince) had four of them," Neuheisel said. "Is he smart as a whip? Absolutely. Is he great in terms of intangibles and leadership? Yes.
"He played well last week (at Kansas State). To think he would have struggled like this tonight, I couldn't have imagined it. In pre-game warm-ups he was flawless. His (passes) were on the money. I was excited."
All of that said, the head coach stopped short of saying Prince would absolutely,
Office Enterprise 2007, definitely play against Houston next week.
"We'll see,
Windows 7 Ultimate," he said. "You don't like to make those kind of comments immediately after the game."
Notified of his coach's vote of not much confidence, Prince mused that that was fair.
"Obviously I didn't play up to a starter's role tonight," he said. "So this week of practice will obviously be crucial, getting the offense back on the right track and clicking again."
Prince, by the way, is nursing an achy shoulder and got it whacked again on his final play of the night, the fumble that Michael Thomas returned 21 yards for a third quarter touchdown.
That could give Neuheisel an out, should he choose to use it.
Neuheisel and offensive coordinator Norm Chow installed the Pistol to give the running game a boost. That part seems to have worked; Johnathan Franklin and Malcolm Jones showed some good things from the tailback spot Saturday night.
But the running game is supposed to complement the throwing game, not supplant it.
And the Bruins' options are limited.
"These are our guys,
Microsoft Office 2007," Chow said. "There's no transaction wire, like there is in the NFL.
"We gotta find something we're capable of doing, that's for sure."
Late Saturday night, the challenge was merely to stay positive. Some fans may have already pushed the panic button; that is, of course, what fans do.
But Neuheisel was man enough to take the PA microphone after the game and address the crowd, saying, "I promise you, we will not give up. We'll be back."
Franklin,
Office Professional 2010, asked if it was difficult to keep one's head up, responded thusly:
"It's definitely hard. But this sport ain't for everybody. We're fine."
He might want to hang around Prince a lot over the next few days. His quarterback could use a lot of positivity."
Reach Jim Alexander at 951-368-9543 or jalexander@PE.com
Office Professional 2010 UCLA's offense misfires a
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