Bruins must deal with Utes, Pac- 12’ s Friday night follies
Teams playing two in a row on road, with a short week thrown in, have struggled.
SALT LAKE CITY — UCLA will be playing at altitude with a run defense that has sunk to subterranean levels, ranking as the worst in major college football. The Bruins’ quarterback will either be a wounded star knocked out of his previous game or a redshirt freshman making the f irst start of his career.
It probably wasn’t the best week for the schedule makers to pile on.
UCLA ( 4- 4 overall, 2- 3 in Pac- 12 Conference play) will face perhaps the most dreaded turnaround in college football, a Friday road game following a Saturday road game, when it plays Utah ( 4- 4, 1- 4) at RiceEccles Stadium. By the time it’s over, the Bruins will have endured two games and four f lights in six days.
“We’re going back to back to two of the tougher environments probably in the Pac- 12,” Bruins center Scott Quessenberry said, also referring to Washington’s Husky Stadium, where the Bruins absorbed a 44- 23 loss last weekend.
A victory against the Utes would be a first of sorts; Pac- 12 teams have gone 0- 5 in Friday road games that followed a Saturday road game since the start of the 2016 season. That record is even more significant considering the road team was favored in three of those five games. Utah is a 61⁄ point favorite against the Bruins.
USC has lost only three times since Sam Darnold took over as the starting quarterback early last season; two of the defeats came during Friday road games that followed Saturday road games.
The Trojans lost to Utah last season in Salt Lake City during Darnold’s first career start, on a touchdown pass with 16 seconds left. Their next loss came a year and six days later on another freaky Friday in Pullman, Wash., a late Darnold fumble sealing his team’s fate.
“Is it a tougher situation? Yeah, it’s a tougher situation,” USC coach Clay Hel-
ton conceded this week. “But as players and coaches, you don’t worry about things you can’t control. You know, we’re asked to go do a job and that our job is to go out there and perform and execute on the day pro-
vided.”
Pac- 12 Commissioner Larry Scott said the challenging road sequence is a function of several factors, including satisfying schedule parameters that include USC’s and Stanford’s con- tracts with Notre Dame and the timing of rivalry games. Scott said a computer formulates scheduling possibilities before ESPN and Fox executives determine which games they would like to showcase on weeknights.
Scott acknowledged during a meeting with editors and reporters from The Times this week that the format calling for a quick turnaround involving back- toback road games was not ideal.
“That’s an ongoing discussion we’re having with our athletic directors,” Scott said, “and they would like us to try to avoid that going forward.”
Scott said the elimination of the Friday night road games following Saturday road games could come as early as next season, though that probably serves as little consolation to the Trojans and Bruins.
Helton said his team eliminated its off day as part of the condensed game week, with other parts of its preparation getting pushed up a day. UCLA coach Jim Mora held night practices this week to increase the amount of recovery time his players were allotted from their game against Washington on Saturday.
“It’s not bad,” Mora said. “It’s just a mind- set. And these guys are resilient.”
The Bruins were already facing uncertainty at quarterback after Josh Rosen sustained undisclosed injuries against the Huskies. Rosen did not practice early in the week, though Mora said Rosen would not need to practice to play against Utah.
If Rosen is unable to play, the Bruins would go with Devon Modster as the starter. Modster has thrown 15 passes in college, though he completed six of seven passes, including a four- yard touchdown, late in the loss to the Huskies.
Helton suggested that the schedule makers could not be blamed for his team’s Friday failures.
“Playing on the Friday night did not have a factor in us losing,” Helton said. “It was more of us losing a close game at the end. So you do your job; it’s part of the business and part of the territory.”