Bruins get a Government Bailout: Thanks to Navy QB Ricky Dobbs, UCLA will immigrate to the District of Columbia for the Eagle Bank Bowl
It wasn’t just a game, it was an adventure.
UCLA needed heavily-favored Navy to beat Army on Saturday, in order to reach a Bowl Game, but Army did not surrender easily. The Cadets scored first, and still held a 3-0 lead at the Half, as Bruin fans squirmed in their seats, at home in front of their TV’s.
Then the UCLA Basketball game started, and Bruin fans had to go to picture-in-picture because Navy — who had beaten Army 7 straight times — was playing a horrible game. Navy was the LEAST-penalized team in the Nation, but had two huge pass completions called back on flags. Luckily for UCLA, Army is still Army, and finally started to decay in the 2nd half. Navy Quarterback Tony Dobbs scored on a run, breaking the all-time record for TD’s by a QB with 24, and then threw for another, that made it 17-3 in the 4th quarter. And considering that Army hadn’t scored a single Touchdown against Navy in the last two years, 17-3 in the 4th seemed pretty safe… and it was. The loss left Army at 5-7 for the year, and Bowl-INeligible, thus thrusting UCLA into the Eagle Bank Bowl on December 29th in Washington D.C. against Bill Cosby’s Temple Owls.
That gave Bruin fans a little solace in the face of the Basketball team getting demolished once again. Nikola Dragovic dragged down UCLA, going 0-9 from the floor, as Mississippi State built a 26-point lead on the way to an 18-point win, 72-54. Center Jarvis Varnado, who has led the Nation in Blocked Shots 2 years running, totally shut down UCLA’s inside game, with 7 Blocks and numerous other “alters,” and Ravern Johnson made the Bruins nevermore, scoring a career-high 29, on 12-15 shooting, while the Bruins shot only 35% as a team, and 20% from three. Don’t laugh, but Varnado and Johnson could have beaten UCLA playing 2-on-5.
So for the month of December, UCLA is a Football school… until former UCLA Head Coaching candidate Al Golden — who now coaches Temple — reminds Bruin fans that UCLA is not really a Football school either… yet. Not that the Bruins couldn’t fly across the Country to Temple’s part of the World and beat them, and Vegas.com has not posted a spread yet, but it would be a shock if the 6-6 Bruins were favored. ****NOTE: It looks like the Bruins ARE favored, by about 4 points. Hmmm. Time to go to Vegas?****
Speaking of favored, here are a few more photos of the UCLA Spirit Squad, who doesn’t need the Military to validate their worthiness.
Comments
3 responses to “THE EAGLE(BANK) HAS LANDED”
I was hoping for a post about this. I was glad to see UCLA made it … for the obvious reasons!
UCLA will be favored by about 6 points. Since Temple hasn’t been to a bowl game in 30 years, they will be more fired up in the beginning than UCLA, and have the crowd advantage. But, they also will be more nervous. The first quarter should be interesting – will UCLA take advantage of Temple being tight, or will Temple ride their energy and dominate? Since Temple doesn’t pass well, it should be all about whether UCLA can stop the run.
[T-H’s Note: It looks like the opening line is UCLA -4, even though UCLA usually can NOT stop the run.]
Props out to Alterraun Verner and Kai Forbath on their Rivals 1st team All American team.
Brian Price and Rahim Moore on 2nd team
BTW Taylor Mays made 3rd team 🙂