Winners And Losers From UCLA’s Win Over Washington

UCLA won their second game in a row this past Saturday with a 24-17 defeat of the Washington Huskies in Seattle. Let’s take a look at the winners and losers from this performance.

Winners

Quentin Lake

Lake has struggled with injury throughout his Bruins tenure, but he set the tone early in this one with a nice interception of Husky QB Dylan Morris.

Friendly Officiating

Late in the second quarter, Kelly again chose to go for it on 4th and Goal, and again went with the QB run, this time on a sneak. DTR clearly had his forward progress stopped way short of the goal line. The offense did eventually push him in on a second or third push, but the call shouldn’t have been a touchdown. The announcers were very clearly surprised. But sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, I suppose.

Greg Dulcich

Dulcich continues to be woefully underutilized in this offense, but he at least did catch the go-ahead score in this one.

Devin Kirkwood

Not a name we’ve heard a lot of, but the freshman came up with a nice bobbling interception late in the 4th quarter on a shot play. The Huskies were hoping to tie things up, and Kirkwood showed nice focus and ball skills on the play.

Running Game

Both Charbonnet and DTR had big days on the ground, and Kelly’s Bruins have now out-rushed their opponents in 13 straight games. They may not be perfect, but you can’t say they don’t have an identity.

UCLA’s Pac 12 Hopes

It would have been nice not to lose to Arizona State. With that loss, UCLA doesn’t exactly control their own destiny. Even so, things could be worse. The Bruins have won two in a row, are 3-1 in the conference and 5-2 overall, and are 3-0 on the road in conference. They’ll only have an opportunity to improve that record moving forward. Again, things may not be perfect, but it’s still the best start of the Kelly era.

Dubs II

It turns out that the Washington Huskies have a new young mascot, an Alaskan Malamute who goes by the name of Dubs II. And he’s friggin adorable.

Losers

Dominant Wins

I think we all got a little carried away after the LSU win, hoping there would be more of that dominance to come this year for what was ostensibly a really talented UCLA team. Alas, that hasn’t quite been the case. UCLA let a pretty bad Arizona team hang around last week until late, and they did the same against UW this week. After going up 17-3, UW was able to tie things up going into the fourth quarter. UCLA did eventually take the lead, pick off UW, and run out the clock to close things out. But it doesn’t exactly inspire that much confidence considering the tougher opponents left on the schedule. Not to mention, UCLA’s late interception was on an underthrown ball where the receiver was open. Had it been thrown better, it’s probably a UW TD.

A win’s a win, but you would have liked to see a little more from this team before they play Oregon, Utah, and USC.

Third Downs

UCLA was only 3/12 on third down in this game, which isn’t going to cut it moving forward. Compare that to UW, who was 9/14 on third down, likely a big reason they were able to keep this game close.UCLA has the biggest game of their season this upcoming week against Oregon. College Gameday is headed to LA, and UCLA has a nice 12:30 pacific time kickoff on ABC for everyone to see. If you wanted to know if Chip Kelly was capable of taking this UCLA team over the hump, it’s now or never. I can’t wait to see what happens. Until then!