THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO CHEER IS CHEER ITSELF

Not to fear — Just because the Bruins didn’t play this past Weekend doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate the UCLA Spirit Squad, whose members are so stunning, they would have made FDR stand up and cheer

The UCLA Bruin Football team is about to get some National exposure, whether they want it or not, when they head to Arizona to play the Wildcats on Thursday night on ESPN.  Arizona will be playing their first game after their Head Coach got unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the season, but that doesn’t mean the Bruins will automatically win.  It’s possible that the Wildcats will pull together now that the high-strung former Coach Mike Stoops is not breathing down their necks.

The now Stoops-less Cats are actually favored by 4 points, despite their 1-5 record, with the “1” being over NAU, a lower-division team.  That win was their first game of the year, and was followed by 5 straight losses to upper division teams.  The Wildcats also lost their last 5 games last season, making them losers of 10 of their last 11 games, and losers in 10 straight games against real teams.  But before Bruin fans start to get over-confident, 4 of the losses this year were to good teams, including Top 10 teams Oklahoma State, Oregon, and Stanford.  And despite the stiff competition, Arizona is ranked 3rd in the Nation in Passing Offense.  Sure, the Cats were playing catch-up, but the shaky UCLA Pass Defense might not be able to contend with that kind of prolific Passing attack.

It will be up to Kevin Prince and the Bruin Offense to win a shootout in the Desert, and UCLA has not yet proven that they are capable of that.  However, they DID outscore Washington State in the Rose Bowl, and Oregon State on the Road.  Beating the Beavers is especially promising in this case, since the Beavers just beat Arizona by 10 last week.  That common opponent information tells you that UCLA definitely has a chance to pull off the Road upset.

But with two fairly even teams, it all comes down to emotion, motivation, and execution.  Who will be the more fired up team, with the whole Country looking in?  Will Arizona’s interim Coach be able to rev up the Wildcats’ engines, or will possible lame-duck Bruin Coach Rick Neuheisel finally inspire his team to play with passion?  And then, which team will implement their gameplan with the least mistakes?  The Bruins will need to improve on their horrendous 3rd Down Defense, by cutting off the wide open, short pass patterns that go just past the sticks.  If they can do that one thing, the game will be theirs for the taking.

With three days still to go before the action, here are 37 more brand new UCLA Cheerleader photos from the Bruins’ last game, to make the time go by faster.