Pasadena, CA- It’s been a drawn out three years since UCLA football team went 3-0 and the first time this season where the defense was not being lauded more than the offense in their Big Ten opener win, 52-38 over Purdue.
Bruins quarterback Nico Iamaleav immediately answered the questions surrounding his last two game performances on finding his receivers and opportunities to put the ball in the air while reading the defense quicker or under pressure delivering on the first drive of the game connecting a 27-yard pass to Semaj Morgan, 6-0.
“I thought in week one, I thought we performed well. Maybe not to our max potential, but we had a great week of preparation and that was the main thing, going into week three, Iamaleava said. “I thought that in week two, we took it lightly. We did not prepare well. You guys saw the results.”
Then quickly after UCLA scored their extra point, it was Purdue turn to show their offensive prowess on their first play resulting in a 75-yard pass to Xavier Townsend, to tie the game, 7-7.
UCLA responded with adding 14 points to end the first quarter, 21-7.
Boilermakers were not favored to win this game and hardly made themselves a threat for an upset despite giving Bruins’ defense their biggest challenge thus far of the season as Head Coach Bob Chesney acknowledged Purdue’s quarterback elite passing and their offensive coordinator play calls for his wide receiver routes becoming a nuisance to UCLA’s man coverage.
“You know, as far as the coverage is concerned, I think the quarterback and the receivers were really good,” Coach Chesney said. “I felt like the pressure mounted a little bit and we were not as clean in our technique as we needed to be. We have guys that are fast. We got guys that are skilled. We got guys that could run and bang with almost anybody. We can’t put ourselves in some sort of panic mode, which might have hit us a little bit…So there’s a lot of things in there that we had stops, and then all of a sudden, it didn’t because of penalties, and good teams don’t do that, so we got to get back and clean that up.”
Still in typical UCLA fashion this season, Coach Chesney utilized what’s been their bread and butter, flexing their depth with rotations of running backs and offensive linemen, to put up 28 points in the second half for another strong finish to remain undefeated.
UCLA’s Wayne Knight ran for 177 yards per 18 carries, just one touchdown shy of having three consecutive games with three touchdowns while nearing the total of touchdowns he had all of last season with needing two more to tie and having nine more games remaining this season to go beyond it.
“This was a game that was gritty, first game in the Big Ten and the other team is very talented,” UCLA linebacker Sammy Omosigho said to fi360News during postgame presser. “…Going forward, it starts tomorrow for the next Saturday.”
Next up for Bob Chesney’s UCLA (3-0) is the Maryland Terrapins (2-1) as they hit the road to travel to College Park at Byrd Stadium for a 10:30am, Pacific time, kickoff.
