8 p.m. kickoff next Saturday so that won’t be fun…

As expected, some notable injuries going into today’s contest. Jay Toia, however, is not listed as one of them.

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Tip-off times and TV broadcast information have yet to be finalized.

Dec. 3 - vs. Washington
Dec. 8 - at Oregon
Jan. 4 - at Nebraska
Jan. 7 - vs. Michigan
Jan. 10 - at Maryland
Jan. 13 - at Rutgers
Jan. 17 - vs. Iowa
Jan. 21 - vs. Wisconsin
Jan. 24 - at Washington
Jan. 27 - at USC
Jan. 30 - vs. Oregon
Feb. 4 - vs. Michigan State
Feb. 8 - vs. Penn State
Feb. 11 - at Illinois
Feb. 14 - at Indiana
Feb. 18 - vs. Minnesota
Feb. 23 - vs. Ohio State
Feb. 28 - at Purdue
March 3 - at Northwestern
March 8 - vs. USC

We have shown no strategy or execution.

The Good: Attendance was way better than expected...47,811 saw this embarrassing loss. Of course, 75% were Indiana fans. The weather was perfect for the Big Ten opener minus the smoke from all those fires. I kinda lost interest when Indiana scored on those two TDs earlier in the game. Garbers was nicely enough to give them one TD. I'm reaching here to find the good...maybe Harden was running better?? He ran 12 plays for 48 yards...an eye popping 4 ypc average.

The Bad: My God...where do I begin. It was bad on offense, defense and special teams. There was not one thing that stood out as being especially bad...in short it was a total stink job.

The Ugly: The penalties, the game plan, the mistakes, the playcalls, the lack of adjustments.

That's the latest rumor...can't really blame him. Our team has already mailed it in...UCLA is a broken team with no heart, no focus, no team leadership,

With both Gary Smith and Keanu Williams out due to injuries and the dline is in a bad way regardless. UCLA is defenseless. Could this be the end of the Foster era after only two games??

Just got in the gates

to beat UCLA. Wow...that's a lot. Probably accurate but disturbing

I bet all the LSU fans are licking their lips when the Bruins come to town.

Saturday, 12:30 Kickoff on ABC...can't wait

Should get going in about 15 mins

Just finished sifting through the numbers:

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Taven Epps was among the players ranked in the initial Rivals top 100 for the 2027 class and picked up a UCLA offer earlier this month. While listed as a safety, he is playing linebacker currently.

I spoke to him Monday night to get his thoughts on the offer, his experience visiting for the Indiana game, his past trip to a practice during spring camp and the inspiration of DeShaun Foster being a former Tustin star.

So expect that to be on the front page first thing in the morning and I’ll link to it here after I drive to UCLA.

I won’t have the video (will share UCLA’s later), but I have the audio from the reporters who were here so I’ll have a transcript probably before UCLA uploads its video of DeShaun’s press conference.

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It wasn’t the loss to Indiana that bothered me — a lot.
It was the way we lost:
At home.
After a bye week which gave us an extra week to prepare.
In blowout fashion to an average team that also had a new coach.
I loved Deshaun Foster as a player, as a running back coach and was happy to see him take over as head football coach.
But barely two games into our foray into the Big 10 it’s painful to admit he’s not prepared for this. He had never done it before. Being a head coach is a craft and a UCLA head coach should have sone head coaching experience.
In the post game presser CDF didn’t have any answers other to say the players failed to execute.
That was an understatement.
But it was more than that.
Indiana beat us up physically in the trenches on both sides of the ball. They gave their QB all day to find his wide open receivers and gave Garbers almost no time to operate.
Our defense couldn’t get off the field; our offense couldn’t stay on it.
We’ve just finished the easy part of our schedule.
Going to be a long season.

1. Talent: Six years of poor recruiting by Chip Kelly has really hurt UCLA. He did some patchwork repair through the transfer portal but never established that connection to HS players that are so important to the success of the program. Other schools have taken the talent that UCLA used to get.

2. Foster: he is simply not big enough to run the program and his lack of experience as a coordinator and HC is clearly evident.

3. Defense: UCLA lost a lot of talent on defense. You don’t lose a generational player like Latu, and the Murphy brothers, Carl Jones without impacting your defense. Throw in losing two starters in the backfield to your crosstown rival and the loss Mausau in the middle.

4. Bienemy: His offense is NOT Chip Kelly’s Blur offense. There is going to be a transition to get the players to make his offense work. The players are having a difficult time with adjustments, timing and execution. At times it looks like a Chinese fire drill, chaotic and undisciplined

5. Big Ten: this is the largest stage in college football. UCLA is having to compete every season with the likes of Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, suc, Washington, Penn State. There are no easy opponents.

6. Garbers and Harden: Garbers is NOT DTR or McNown or Aikman. He’s a good serveable QB that has a poor offensive line. He can be better if he didn’t have to run for his life on every play. Harden is a good back but he is not Josh Kelley or Charbonnet. Again, he is running behind a very poor offensive line and can’t seem to find traction’.

This is going to be a very painful season. I was predicting 4.5 wins but it may be worse than that. There WILL be fallout from this season and some coaches and key players may not be around next season as a result. With the NIL and the transfer portal UCLA may never be the program it once was

Meet the first five-stars

Initial 2027 top 100

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I want us to consistently get to the line of scrimmage with 10+ seconds on the play clock. I hate feeling like everyone is rushed to get the play off or risking a flag.

I’ll make my way over to the Bruin Walk at 1:50 p.m.

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Players are still uploading, here’s DeShaun Foster (speakers eventually turn on after a few questions):

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Who else is ready for basketball?

Our game against Indiana. Is it going to be a low scoring game? Do you think that UCLA will be able to run against their defense. Do you think that Garbers will find his game early or will the offense? I think that on paper, we’re evenly matched and the victory could hinge on whoever executes well and makes the fewest mistakes. It’s critical that UCLA doesn’t let the game run away from them because the WCO offense doesn’t play catch up very well. My greatest fear is that Indiana has a high-powered offense and could easily score on our defense. Their last game they scored a whomping 77 points without breaking a sweat.

Yours thoughts on the outcome?

Since I’ll be busy elsewhere most of today, wanted to make sure I got this up now ahead of tomorrow’s game:

I see where the PAC 12 is going to add Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State to the lone two schools — Washington State and Oregon State in an attempt to build the conference again.
It shout be the States Conference.
Hope they get a better TV deal.