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UCLA Bruins vs Houston Cougars Football Recap

UCLA 31, Houston 13

The Houston Cougars and UCLA Bruins who appeared in the first two weeks of the 2010 regular season?

Neither one of them showed up late at night in Pasadena, California.

Yes, Houston had a reason for its problems, but as for UCLA, it has to be said that the boys from Westwood engineered a tremendous transformation on their own.

It’s not easy to endure a 35-0 rout on your home field, but that’s what the Bruins went through on Sept. 11 against the Stanford Cardinal. Coach Rick Neuheisel’s team got bossed around in its own ballyard, and there were serious doubts about the Bruins heading into this game, even though Houston has a thin defense and a Conference USA-like penchant for enabling just about any mediocre offense to get healthy. The only thing about this game that made UCLA a difficult choice was that the Bruins didn’t just need to be better than they were against Stanford. They needed to be a LOT better, enough to score, oh, about 30 points and win a game by merely containing the Cougars. UCLA couldn’t have expected to win this game 42-41 or, for that matter, 13-10. The Bruins figured to need a good point total and keep Houston just a little bit lower on the board.

As it turned out, UCLA was able to smother the Cougars. It’s just that the Bruins had some help in that regard.

One will have to forgive the fans that assembled at the Rose Bowl on Saturday night if they weren’t able to tell which of the two teams were nationally-ranked and which wasn’t. Sophomore running back Jonathan Franklin rushed for three first-half touchdowns and rolled to 158 yards on the ground, as the unheralded Bruins jumped all over the (no-longer) 23rd-ranked Houston Cougars, jumping out to a 31-3 halftime lead and coasting home to the finish line. 

Houston’s highly-hyped fastbreak on turf offense was rendered impotent by a UCLA defense that intercepted senior quarterback Case Keenum twice in the first half and forced two three-and-out series that each netted all of three yards.  More importantly from the perspective of Houston head coach Kevin Sumlin, Keenum got injured trying to make a tackle following one of his two interceptions and is almost certainly done for the season with a torn ACL. 

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As if Houston needed worse news, junior quarterback Cotton Turner, Keenum’s backup, left the game with an injury after replacing Keenum in the second half.  That’s the help UCLA received on Saturday, but it really shouldn’t take away from the quality of the Bruins’ physical, focused and feisty performance. The home team was in command from start to finish, while Sumlin never should have started the still-concussed Keenum against a non-conference opponent. Another week of rest would have had Keenum fully healthy for the remainder of the C-USA season.

While true frosh quarterback Terrence Broadway played decently for the Cougars, completing 5-of-8 passes for 84 yards and driving the Cougars 74 yards for a third-quarterback touchdown (and later, 49 yards for a fourth-quarter field goal), Houston’s chances of repeating as Conference USA champs have suddenly taken a mammoth hit.

UCLA’s season, on the other hand, is off life support and resting comfortably... for now.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer