SB Nation - Brandon Bennett

Spaulding Roundup: Youth Movement In Bruin Offense

Nestor — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:32:20 -0000

We will start our roundup today with a little update on our OL. As mentioned in my fanpost yesterday, Stan Hasiak (who is not contemplating a mission) has been sitting out practices last two days with a sore shoulder, allowing coaches to experiment with the starting OL. Per the LAT's report "Jeff Baca, the starting left tackle alternated with Brandon Bennett at right guard with the first team," while "Mike Harris played Baca's tackle spot." Hasiak is supposed to be back today, which will allow coaches to reset to the starting lineup announced after Saturday's scrimmage. Obviously the fate of our season hinges on how these young guys - four of whom were not in UCLA uniform last season - perform this year.

Ted Miller on ESPN's Pac-10 blog made the astute observation that CRN and his staff are going along with a youth movement not because of necessity, but becayse they think "it's the best way to win":

Two things: 1. These guys aren't stiffs; 2. Wonder what these guys will look like in 2011, when quarterback Kevin Prince is a junior?

The two true freshmen on the left side, tackle Xavier Su'a-Filo and guard Stanley Hasiak, certainly pass the sight test and were both among the nation's highest-rated offensive linemen last year. Right guard Eddie Williams is a 331 pound powerhouse from Mt. San Antonio Junior College in Walnut, CA.

Sophomore center Kai Maiava started nine games as a true freshman at Colorado. True sophomore right tackle Jeff Baca started eight games for the Bruins last year.

They are the only two players from the post-spring depth chart who remain No. 1 at their line positions.

While the season-ending knee injury to senior Micah Kia and the sprained knee that will sideline senior Nick Ekbatani four to six weeks certainly aren't good things, neither was a sure-thing to start. Ekbatani was running second-team at center, while Kia was expected to split time with Hasiak.

So starting inexperienced players is not move motivated by necessity. It's a choice.

Now the key will be for the coaches to figure out how they can get some continuity with their key players so they can grow through this season:

"By definition, continuity requires people all being there," Neuheisel said. "You can't have continuity if you don't have everybody learning the steps, learning the dance. You have to spend time with one another, not only so the footwork is choreographed, but the calls and the dummy calls. Those things all take a little while, and we've got to grow with that."

Most importantly, they need to grow together.

There is nothing more frustrating for an offensive line coach than when one lineman lags behind, causing a crack in the wall.

Offensive line coach Bob Palcic must ensure that as freshman Stanley Hasiak improves, so does redshirt sophomore center Kai Maiava. As Maiava improves, so does sophomore Jeff Baca. And so on.

"That's Bob's job," Neuheisel said. "The offensive line coach has to make sure we're all staying on task. If there needs to be extra, there needs to be extra for everybody, so that we're all coming along together. One for all and all for one."

I think the minor setback (well it sounds minor at least according to the reports) of Hasiak's injury could be a silver lining because it is allowing Mike Harris to get familiar with rest of the starting unit. While it is ideal that we can have as much continuity as possible with a new core of starting unit, it doesn't hurt to have the guys behind in the depth chart also gain some familiarity with the starting unit, in case they are called upon during the season.

Speaking of getting called on (and youth movement), the LAT led their report today with a quick profile on Damien Thigpen. Many of you know the story. Thigpen originally committed to Tennessee this past season. However, after they went through their coaching change, he was off their new coaching staff's radar. Here is how Thigpen ended up in Westwood:

"Their plans seemed to be going a different way, so I decide to look around," Thigpen said.

Eldridge Armstrong, the uncle of UCLA linebacker Isaiah Bowens, called Neuheisel and asked whether the Bruins were interested. Armstrong and Doug Thigpen, Damien's father, are secret service agents.

Neuheisel was interested, and now he has a freshman running back who lately has taken turns with the first-team offense.

He certainly has gotten Neuheisel and Chow's attention:

"He has too much lighting in his bottle not to use him," Coach Rick Neuheisel said.

Thigpen's performance in Saturday's scrimmage put him on the fast track for playing time. He returned a punt 70 yards for a touchdown and had a kickoff return of 61 yards. He also had 31 yards in seven carries.

"We have to have a plan for him," offensive coordinator Norm Chow said.

I can't wait to see him. However, here is my one thought about burning his redshirt season. I hope if the coaches burn his redshirt situation, they will use him more than just sparingly in special teams situation. It would be awesome if Chow can use his speed to create mismatches around the field. When I read about this kid I have visions of Dexter Carter (not as a FAIL in Niners uniform but the way he lit up Bobby Bowden's Seminoles offense back in the day).

It sounds like Thigpen is relishing his early experience as a Bruin and eagerly "learning the assigments." Another team-mate of his, who has embraced a new role with the team is Chane Moline. Balderas from the OC Register blogged yesterday about how the former TB is fired up to play FB (and hit LBs) this season:

"It’s a beating. It’s a lot different," Moline said of the fullback position. "As a tailback, you’re running the ball, so you’re obviously going to try to put a beating on the guy that’s trying to tackle you, or avoid him. I’m not a running back that’s going to be juking and jiving. I’m going to put my shoulder down and hit you."

He’ll hit if it means picking up an extra yard or two. He’ll hit to protect his quarterback. He’ll hit to give his teammates some running room. He’ll hit because that’s what fullbacks do.

"As a fullback, you’re hitting linebackers every play you’re in," he said. "That’s the biggest difference. I learned that last year."

Moline got a chance to reacquaint himself with the fullback position when Trevor Theriot hurt his knee prior to the Fresno State game last season. Moline was moved out of the tailback position and back to fullback.

With the depth that the Bruins have at the tailback position this season, it was clear that Moline would not be returning to his previous spot.

"Going into this year, I knew what I was going for," he said. "I bulked up over the offseason."

Moline sat out practice yesterday with a hip-flexor but he should be back today. I have always enjoyed watching this kid play. Again I will bring up a Niners reference (can't help it). But I do have visions of Rathman-Craig with Moline-Coleman/Franklin/Knox in the backfield. Mix in all the speed element with Carroll and Thigpen, and the experiences of Austin, Paulsen, and Moya, well my mouth is watering for some Bruin offense.

It will be up the coaches to mix in the noticable youth movement all over our offense with the veteran experiences of Moline, Austin and Paulsen. If those guys can develop the right chemisrty around a new quarterback and young but talented OL through the season getting us to a bowl game, it will set us up perfectly heading into CRN's third season.

GO BRUINS.

The Wait Is Over For Bruin Football: Practice Starts Today

Nestor — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:00:14 -0000

So it all starts today. As mentioned over the weekend the season gets started today with a "Media Day" in the morning and then first practice (which is open to public) at 3:30 pm PST. I am sure we are going to be reading stories from the Media Day and first practice starting tomorrow starting later this evening and with our usual roundup in the AM. Already there are few notes up on the official site that should get all of us ready for the camp.

Following the tweeter feed yesterday it was pretty clear the players were coming back to Westwood yesterday. Everyone of them sound excited and fired up (Case in point here is Taylor Embree). Here are the details from the official site:

On Sunday afternoon, the veteran UCLA football players reported to camp. The first team meeting is scheduled for tonight. On Saturday afternoon, the newcomers reported to camp and went through a series of orientation meetings on Sunday.

Monday's schedule includes position meetings in the morning and a short walkthrough. The players will participate in Media Day at noon and at the same time shoot portrait photos for television broadcasts and other material for the Rose Bowl video board.

The first practice is scheduled for 3:00 pm. For the first few days, head coach Rick Neuheisel and the coaches will split the team into two groups so the players can receive more one-on-one coaching from the staff. The first group will begin practice at 3:00 pm. The entire team will work on special teams for 20 minutes at 4:20 pm and then the second group will practice from 4:40 - 6:00 pm.

I hope some of you get to make it out there either today or sometime in the coming weeks. Just reading through the position overviews it becomes clear how intense the competition is going to be this year. We just need to have the players stay healthy. More details after the jump.

Note "several" of the walkons are not reporting for camp until after the first game or the start of school. Also, it looks like Jayson Allmond is another scholarship freshman who is not going to report because he is waiting for issues related to NCAA Clearinghouse issues to be resolved. Perhaps Brian Price can give him a call and tell the kid to hang in there.

The official site also posted whole bunch of pre-season notes. There were few details I found to be interesting and worth sharing. First here are the players we are going to have this season who missed entire if not most of last season due to injury and other issues:

WHO WAS MISSING -- The following players, who will return to the team for 2009, were listed in the 2008 pre-season two-deep or figured to play a prominent role, if available for action last season: Offense --- TE Logan Paulsen - missed 11 g to injury; OL Jeff Baca - missed 3 g to injury; OL Darius Savage - missed 2 g to injury; OL - Sean Sheller - missed all 12 g to injury; OL - Mike Harris - missed 7 g to injury; RB - Christian Ramirez - missed all 12 g due to academic eligibility issues; FB Trevor Theriot - missed 9 g to injury; Defense --- Kyle Bosworth - missed 10g to injury; DL - Jess Ward - missed 5 g due to injury; DL Reginald Stokes - missed 1 g due to injury.

So here is these guys staying healthy in 2009. All those injuries meant UCLA had a lot of cubbies getting action this past season:

YOUTH AND EXPERIENCE -- UCLA played a total of 22 freshmen (11 redshirt and 11 true freshmen) in the 2008 season. Sixteen of the twenty scholarship players included in that group are scheduled to return in 2009. Of that group of sixteen returning players, 11 have starting experience (Defense --- So. Rahim Moore, S - 12 g; So.R Steve Sloan, LB - 9 g; So. R Akeem Ayers, LB - 3 g; So. Datone Jones, DL - 2 g; So. Tony Dye, S - 1g; Offense --- So. Cory Harkey, TE - 7 g; So. Taylor Embree, WR - 8 g; So. Jeff Baca, OL - 8 g; So.R Nate Chandler, TE - 2 g; So. Derrick Coleman, RB - 1 g; So.R Mike Harris, OL - 5 g).

Needless to say it will be exciting to see how these guys can improve on this year. Also, a total of 29 players saw action for the first time in 2009:

FIRST ACTION -- A total of 29 players (17 offensive and 12 defensive) saw their first action as a Bruin during the 2008 season (11 true freshmen - seven offensive and four defensive players (LB Sean Westgate, S Rahim Moore, TE Cory Harkey, WR Taylor Embree, S Tony Dye, WR Antwan Moutra, WR Nelson Rosario, RB Aundre Dean, RB Derrick Coleman, OL Jeff Baca, DL Datone Jones); 11 redshirt freshmen - five defensive and six offensive players (DB Courtney Viney, LB Steve Sloan, LB Akeem Ayers, DB Glenn Love, OL/TE Nate Chandler, RB Raymond Carter, DL Justin Edison, WR Ryal Jagd, QB Chris Forcier, TE Glenn Rauscher, OT Mike Harris), six redshirt sophomores - three offensive and three defensive players (OL Brandon Bennett, LB Mike Schmitt, DL Reginald Stokes, OL Sonny Tevaga, OL Jake Dean, DB Garrett Rubio), one redshirt junior (QB Kevin Craft).

Of course some of those guys such as Carter, Dean and Craft are either no longer with us or will probably not get much action this coming year. However, I think those numbers show how Neuheisel will not hesitate to put in his young guys in there if they are competing hard out at Spaulding and doing what the coaches are asking them to do.

Lastly, the pre-season notes also has some interesting numbers on freshman QBs record at UCLA during last 20 years:

*2002 (8-5, T 4th Pac-10) -- Matt Moore (Fr.) game 8 win over Stanford; Drew Olson (Fr.) game 9 win at Washington; game 10 win at Arizona; game 11 loss to USC; game 12 loss to Wash. State; game 13 bowl win over New Mexico.
*1999 (4-7, 9th Pac-10) -- Cory Paus (Fr.R) game 3 win over Fresno St.; game 5 loss at Ariz. State; game 6 win over Oregon; game 7 loss to Cal; game 8 loss at Ore. State; game 9 loss to Arizona; game 10 win over Washington; Ryan McCann (Fr. R) game 11 loss at USC.
*1995 (7-5, T 5th Pac-10) -- Cade McNown (Fr.) game 3 loss to Oregon; game 5 win over Fresno St.; game 6 win over Arizona; game 7 win at Stanford; game 8 win over Cal; game 9 loss at Ariz. State; game 10 loss to Washington; game 11 win at USC; game 12 bowl loss to Kansas.
*1992 (6-5, 8th Pac-10) -- Rob Walker (Fr. R) game 2 win at BYU; game 3 win over San Diego State; game 4 loss at Arizona; game 5 loss to Stanford; game 10 win at Oregon; Ryan Fien (Fr.) game 7 loss to Arizona State.
*1990 (5-6, T 6th Pac-10) -- Tommy Maddox (Fr. R) game 3 loss at Michigan; game 4 win at Wash. State; game 5 loss to Arizona; game 6 win over San Diego State; game 7 loss at Cal; game 8 win over Oregon State; game 9 loss at Oregon; game 10 win at Washington; game 11 loss to USC.
*1989 (3-7-1, 9th Pac-10) -- Bret Johnson (Fr. R) started all 11 games. game 1 loss to Tenn.; game 2 win over San Diego State; game 3 loss to Michigan; game 4 win over Cal; game 5 win over Ariz. State; game 6 loss at Arizona; game 7 loss at Oregon State; game 8 loss to Washington; game 9 loss at Stanford; game 10 loss to Oregon; game 11 tie at USC.

You can sense that Cade McNown was kind of an anomaly and even he had a roller coaster first two years. Bret Johnson, Rob Walker, and Ryan Fien were total disasters (well Johnson was just a disgrace).

Anyway, those numbers above are fairly sobering and should be datapoints we all take into account before deluding ourselves with visions of grandeur that takes over average college football fans around this time of the year. I still think Prince will be an upgrade from what we saw last year. However, given how legends like McNown struggled during their first year in college we should keep our expectations in check.

GO BRUINS.

Spaulding Roundup: ATV Aces It & More Notes On Our Frontlines

Nestor — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:20:22 -0000

Well it's kind of tough to pivot back to football after my previous post. But I have in pretty good authority is that is exactly what EZ would do (and I know he was reading this blog religiously every am especially during those brutal Dorrell years). We will start with someone who has reminded all of us what Bruin student athletes are all about: ATV. I guess I thought ATV was done with blogging this past week since school was winding down but I was wrong. He has one more update from his 2009 summer with the following note on how did in that Romanian class he took. He aced it:

Today I found out I received an A in the class. That means all the five hour days every day for six weeks paid off. I am done with my foreign language requirement now and have just nine more classes until I have earned my BA from UCLA

What else did you expect right? Well while his chances of success on the football field is pretty good as well this year, there is one game in which he has been coming out on the losing end. Apparently his girlfiend has been running laps around him in pool. You will have to read the full details here.

Moving on let's talk about ATV's team-mates on both sides of the line. More after the jump.

We will pick up where we left off yesterday: the OL. Al Balderas from the OC Register posted few interesting comments from our OL about why they are expecting a better season this year:

"We were pretty light up front last year as a whole, so that created mismatches for us," lineman Nick Ekbatani said in an e-mail. "I don’t believe that will be a problem for us this season. Guys have worked hard and coach Linn has done a tremendous job helping us get stronger.

"It was as if there was a new culture created this offseason in the weight room and on the field. I know these gains will allow us to create some mismatches this year, as opposed to being mismatched."

That’s not all.

Sophomore Jeff Baca and senior Micah Kia gained experience from last season, and redshirt sophomore (and transfer from Colorado) Kai Maiava should compete for a starting spot on the O-line.

"I thought guys like (redshirt juniors) Jake Dean and Brandon Bennett showed some noticeable improvement (at spring camp), Ekbatani added.

Well I know everyone is feeling optimistic. So am I. When the new depth chart comes out we will have to match up the weights from this past spring with August. We will probably see some gains. However, I am still going to remain a bit skeptical because I feel like I have read this kind of feel good off-season story every year. My biggest question right now around this unit is toughness and it will be interesting to see how they come out in the first few games.

It seems like Coach Todd Howard is striking the same note with regards to cautious optimis while talking about his students - linemen from other side of the ball. He gave a very interesting interview to Robert Kuwada from Bruin Report Online (formerly the UCLA beat writer for the OC Register) sounding off about this year's DL. Since the article is not behind a subscription firewall here is an excerpt on Howard's cautious optimism:

"I’m always optimistic and I always think the new group is going to do better than the group previously, though that remains to be seen."

That does remain to be seen, but, for the record, Howard believes this defensive line can be very good, the ends just as productive as Bruce Davis and Justin Hickman were in his first year in Westwood when they tied for fourth in the nation in sacks and earned All-American honors.

"The guys that I have this year I think have a chance to be as good as those two guys," Howard said, of Bosworth and sophomore Datone Jones.

"I think both of them will have a shot at double-digit sacks. If they can stay healthy throughout the 12 games and hopefully a bowl game, they will get double-digit sacks. You’ve got Datone, who is bigger than Hickman and faster the Hickman. He’s a sophomore, so that’s the only thing – you have to see if it clicks for him, but he’s working hard.

"Then you have Korey Boz, who is every bit as fast as Bruce Davis was. He’s stronger than Bruce Davis. He might not be as flexible as Bruce Davis, but that was something I told him at the end of the spring that he needed to work on. I felt like had he not had a few misses here and there, he would have had double-digit sacks last year …as it was, he had 7 ½.

"I think a guy like Brian Price should get seven or eight inside. And Jerzy (Siewierski) has a better finesse game than Brigham Harwell, and he might be the best athlete of all them."

You can read rest of the interview with Howard here.

It is going to be a treat to see these guys go up against each other for few weeks starting next Monday. While I am going to wait for now to get completely optimistic about this coming soon, I am looking forward to reading about the competiton that is going to take place in Spaulding. It is going to be fierce for the first time in a very long time in Westwood.

GO BRUINS.