Arizona State at UCLA
After UCLA’s first two games of the year, wins against Hawaii and LSU, LA Times famous sport’s columnist Bill Plaschke wrote an article entitled; “Hope has arrived. All aboard the UCLA Bandwagon.” But since then they’ve lost a close one to Fresno State and then a not so close one this past Saturday against Arizona State—a game which determined, at least for now, the leader of the PAC-12 South Division.
It was really close the first half with the teams combining to record nine scores in the twelve possessions played, one punt a piece, and one fumble by the Bruins that led to a field goal resulting in a 24-23 ASU lead at the break. The Sun Devils came out after the half and four plays, 75 yards, and a UCLA unsportsmanlike conduct penalty later they were in the end zone on a Rachaad White 49 yard run. Add on a successful two point conversion—Arizona State up 32-23. The rest of UCLA’s 2nd half consisted of one punt, a missed field goal, and three turnovers on downs. In the meantime the Sun Devils put 10 more points on the board—final score 42-23.
Dedicating the game to his grandfather, who passed away the day before, Arizona State QB Jayden Daniels was laser focused completing close to 70% of his passes for 286 yards, 2 TD’s—both to Junior WR Ricky Pearsall–and no interceptions. Almost as efficient, UCLA QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson connected on 21-of-32 for 235 yards and one TD. But the Bruins couldn’t stop the Sun Devil ground game as they rushed 33 times for 177 yards and 3 TD’s, two by Rachaad White, averaging more than 5 yards per carry. For the Bruins, RB Zach Charbonnett and DTR combined for 184 yards of UCLA’s total of 200 with Senior RB Brittain Brown picking up the rest as well as their single rushing TD.
Other than first downs and time of possession the only other thing the Bruins got more of than the Sun Devils was penalties, eight for about 90 yards. Normally it’s DTR that’s averaging more per pass than his opponent but as reported by the AP for ESPN; “Four of Daniels’ completions went for 47 or more yards . . . The Bruins need to fix their suspect pass defense if they want to post the program’s first winning season since 2015. They have allowed nine pass plays of 40 yards or more, which is the most by a Power Five program and second-most nationally.” UCLA will probably be more than happy to leave town for their next game at Arizona where they should be able to right the ship. Arizona State heads back home but they’ll be facing a very confident Stanford team who just knocked off Oregon.
USC at Colorado
The Trojans were more than happy heading to Boulder, Colorado after their loss in the Coliseum to Oregon State the previous week. They seemed to enjoy the altitude and the temperature of this other mile high plus city while playing a game against Colorado in which they pretty much did twice as good or better as their opponent in every category. 20 first downs to 11, 494 total yards of offense against 242, 218 rushing yards against 80, and 37 points against 14. There’s one more category that USC “excelled” in—penalties where they outpaced their opponents with 12 penalties for 125 yards. Yes, the Trojans are still playing undisciplined ball just as they did under their former coach, although it doesn’t seem to effect whether they win or lose against a team like Colorado who has far less talent to start with. But they still have three Top 25 teams to play on their schedule including Notre Dame, Arizona State, and BYU, in addition to Utah and their cross town rival UCLA. If they don’t clean it up they could easily have their worse season in decades.
The Trojans were anything if not steady and consistent in this one scoring 4 TD’s, one in each quarter, and three field goals to match against a Colorado team that didn’t put up any points at all in the first and fourth quarters. USC Junior QB Kedon Slovis connected on 65% of his passes for 276 yards, 3 TD’s, and no interceptions while three Trojan running backs combined for 221 yards on the ground with Senior Keaontay Ingram picking up most of those, 124, and Vavae Malepeai collecting their sole rushing TD. As usual, Junior WR Drake London collected the lion’s share of the yards in the air, 130 on 9 receptions some spectacular and jaw dropping, including a one-handed TD grab–one of three thrown by Slovis with the other two going to Freshman TE Michael Trigg and Sophomore WR Gary Bryant Jr.
On the other side of the ball, Buffaloe Freshman QB Brendon Lewis completed 10-of-17 for 162 yards, no scores, was intercepted once and sacked five times. Although they did score one rushing TD after a USC fumble on their own side of the field, the Colorado running game was equally ineffective averaging just 2 yards per rush, 80 yards total on 39 carries. Head Coach Karl Dorrell wasn’t about to blame his QB saying; “It wasn’t just about Brendon,” and put the blame on the offensive line and even the usually stout defense suggesting that the only bright spot for the Buffs was his punter Josh Watts. Wow-talk about throwing just about everybody under the bus. Sounds like some ass chewing and difficult practice sessions are coming up for Colorado during their bye week. As Coach Dorrell said after the game; “There’s so many things we need to fix right now.” They’ll be hosting Arizona on October 16th and I imagine it will at least feel like many of those things got fixed after that game. The Trojans go back to the Coliseum to host a Utah team that makes me wonder how long has it been since USC lost back-to-back games in the coliseum?