LOS ANGELES — Which UCLA football team were the Arizona Wildcats supposed to prepare for all week?
The Bruins who were outscored 95-42 over the first 241 minutes and 12 seconds of the 2019 season, looking more like Chip Kelly’s San Francisco 49ers than his old Oregon Ducks squads?
Or the resurgent unit that engineered arguably the wackiest, wildest, most surprising comeback in college football in years in last weekend’s 67-63 win over Washington State in Pullman?
This was #Pac12AfterDark on seven cups of the finest dark roast from Brazil. This was a syringe full of the purest epinephrine, directly to the heart, no warning. Heath Ledger as the Joker mixed with the Sex Pistols on a bender.
Trailing Washington State 49-17 with 3:48 left in the third quarter, the Bruins outscored the Cougars 50 — that’s FIFTY — to 14 to pull off arguably the most incredible comeback since … well, since they scored 35 straight points in a 45-44 comeback win over Kevin Sumlin and Texas A&M in 2017.
UCLA reeled off 29 straight in a five-minute span to cut Wazzu’s lead to three, then traded blows with the Cougars until ultimately dealing the final coup de grâce, a Dorian Thompson-Robinson 15-yard touchdown connection to Demetric Felton with 1:07 left.
“After the game, it was like, holy … like, we really just won this game?” Thompson-Robinson said.
His shock was justified. Coming into the game, he’d thrown for all of 556 yards and five touchdowns. He had 507 passing yards and five touchdowns against WSU alone, lifting himself forever into Bruin lore.
“I put all my attention toward my teammates going into the locker room,” Thompson-Robinson said. “I just kind of sat back and kind of really took it all in and as everybody was celebrating and stuff, and really saw their faces. That really put joy into my heart.”
And then … it was over. The celebration was as brief as it was raucous.
If the Wildcats think UCLA is going to let this one linger, they’ve got another thing coming.
“It’s the way we’ve always done things,” UCLA head coach Chip Kelly said on Wednesday. “One loss doesn’t define you and one win doesn’t define you, so they came back out and went back to work on Monday.”
Asked how the team had processed the win — Was it a sense of relief? Exhaustion? Exhilaration? — Kelly said the Bruins treated it “just like you do every game.”
UCLA head coach Chip Kelly, center, shouts to his players during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Washington State in Pullman, Wash., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2019. (AP Photo/Young Kwak)
“We have a set way we do everything, so you can feel really good about it for 24 hours or feel really bad about it for 24 hours but then you have to put it behind you because you have another opponent coming up,” he said. “So we have Arizona coming up, who is a very, very talented team and is coming off an open date, so you just turn their film on and get a look at what they can do and that will get your attention very quickly.”
This was Kelly on a good day, his mood relatively lightened.
In recent weeks, he’s been his typically tight-lipped and testy self with the media, sparring with the Los Angeles Times’ Ben Bolch regarding a stagnant offense that has so scarcely resembled the razzmatazz offense he employed at Oregon to great success. The “Blur” offense was a thing of the past, he contended, after three consecutive two-touchdown performances did little to inspire the UCLA fan base.
The Washington State game was the “Blur” on steroids. It was a tennis match on a 100-yard court.
“The second half as a team we went out there loose and soft,” Washington State coach Mike Leach said. “Loose and soft, and then we gave them a little momentum and let them back in. We didn’t tackle them. We still haven’t tackled them.”
Speaking of missed tackles, one thing helped Kelly quickly process the win and move on to the next game: Khalil Tate.
“He’s probably one of the most dynamic players in the country because of his ability with his arms and his legs, you know?” Kelly said.
“He’s not just a runner, really throws the deep ball extremely well, so you have to be conscious of that, but you also have to be conscious that he can tuck the ball and go from wherever. I think he scored on an 86-yard counter play in their last game and ran away from people and he’s done it for the last couple of years. You know, last year he was a little banged up, but we’re going to get a full, healthy Khalil Tate and it’s going to take all 11 guys to defend him.”
And for all 60 minutes, it seems.
