In the most complimentary way, I ask: What the heck was that first half, UCLA?
Yes, really. With Saturday’s 28-10 victory over Michigan State, Bob Chesney has the Bruins football team 7-0 for the first time since 2005. Still undefeated and still the only team in the Big Ten — and SEC — conferences that can say so. Ranked No. 9 in the nation and moving on up.
And so I ask: Two lost fumbles before halftime? Two drops? Two holding penalties? A meager 84 yards through the air and a modest 14-7 halftime lead? Against a majorly depleted Michigan State team fielding a freshman third-stringer at quarterback — that also lost two more of its best players to injury in the first half?
These Bruins are too good to be letting the wounded Spartans (2-6, 0-5 Big Ten) hang with them for even a half.
And yet, for a hot moment, doubt started to creep back in: Was this the day Chesney’s chariot turned back into a pumpkin? Was the last petal from the enchanted rose about to fall, this beauty of a season due to turn ugly? Was the fairy tale almost over?
No. The nation’s best second-half team gathered itself — “at halftime in the locker room, guys coming over, ‘Let’s go, man. We got you!” quarterback Ty Dieffenbach said — exerted its will and outscored the Spartans 14-0 in the third quarter. They mercifully ran out the clock with a commanding 28-7 lead going into the fourth and improved to a tidy 5-0 in the Big Ten.
It’s what Chesney’s teams do.
Last season at James Madison, the Dukes led the nation in second-half scoring, averaging 20.9 points per game.
And this charmed season at UCLA, the Bruins came into Saturday’s game averaging the second-most second-half points in the nation (20.8).
Being able to bear down and wear down opponents is a sign of a good team.
Being able to jump on them at the outset would be the sign of a great one.
Let’s fast-forward a year. You’ve stopped pinching yourself to make sure you aren’t dreaming and the Bruins — who were unranked and unheralded to start the season after so many years of ineptitude — really are in control of their own College Football Playoff destiny.
A year from now, you’ll have been conditioned to expect them to win these games, and you’ll no longer be worried about whether this was all a dream.
But you would be concerned about slow starts. You’d bemoan sluggish opening acts and fret about how that might bite the Bruins in the big games that are looming.
Chesney doesn’t have to make that imaginative leap into the future.
He’s worried about it now. And that’s why his Bruins are legitimately a team to contend with, because he’s coaching them to be that. He expects it: “When you walk on that field on Saturday, you walk out and know that you’ve done it the right way, and that’s how you treat something that’s important. Not special, but important.”
And so I ask: Why didn’t UCLA treat the first half like it was important Saturday?
“Two fumbles, two drops, two holding penalties? You can’t do it, you just can’t do it if you want to win really close games,” said Chesney, the first-year UCLA coach, who said he’d spend the week before the Bruins host Nevada in a nonconference Halloween game by emphasizing ball security at practice and that he’d watch the tape to determine what triggered the holding penalties.
“We’re taking three, four touchdowns off the board by doing that,” Chesney added. “Never going to let this happen again.”
UCLA can’t because it doesn’t have any room for error.
If the Bruins win out, Chesney will have directed an underdog to a surprise CFP berth for the second consecutive season. But if the Bruins lose a game, it gets dicey.
Never mind the rows of recruits at Saturday’s victory, and forget for a moment about the fans who are slowly finding their way back to the Rose Bowl for Bruins football games. UCLA needs to continue to impress the computers and the pollsters and CFP committee members who could eventually determine UCLA’s fate if the Bruins don’t do it themselves.
And though no fault of Chesney’s, UCLA is playing a soft schedule. Per ESPN, the Bruins’ slate was the 51st easiest coming into the season and what remains of it is the 64th easiest.
And UCLA, which is winning behind a backup quarterback, which went 3-9 last season and which had so much ground to cover after starting the season outside of the top 25 — won’t likely get anyone’s benefit of the doubt if a first-half lull leads to a loss.
The Bruins are proving themselves probably the best team in the nation after halftime.
If they can do that, why not aim to be the best team in the nation?
Fours (quarters) up!?
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