Just as we expected, UCLA kept the game close in the first half and then came out and took the win in the second half, uncharacteristically of Dorrell teams.  We believed the key to winning this game was to keep it close in the first half. Despite Dorrell's poor ability to adjust at halftime and in-game, we knew that psychologically this team just needed to know it could win, before it would win.  This victory proves the point, this team has the talent to win.  It just doesn't have the coaching to win consistently, and the coaching will be tested more often than not in the coming weeks. 

We came out of the half of a tie game against last year's 9th place Pac-10 team and busted a few big plays to break the game open.  The OL was much improved, and Kai Forbath is looking like Dorrell's next All-America kicker sooner than we had anticipated.  The offense put up some yards on a horrible defensive unit that couldn't tackle and the defense did improve at least for a half, but how did that Washington team score 31 points on us?!  

We needed to play last year's 9th place Pac-10 team at home to rebuild our confidence, and of course we got the job done today.  But this was not nearly the game we need to put ourselves back in contention for anything - plenty of those games on tap (although 2 easy games come first).  We are still in the Pac-10 race, but until we beat … say … one of the top 5 teams we really can't get cocky.  We've only beaten Stanford and Washington, the two worst teams in the conference last year.  By the way, (1-2) MWC foe UNLV just spanked Utah 27-0.  Aslo, be prepared for the preaching Dorrell cultists to come back.  More on the game tomorrow.

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