FanHouse Ucla Bruins

Pitt has been ranked No. 4 or better in all but one week this year. Despite that, the story all season has been that Pitt has never won more than two games in the NCAA Tournament.

Duke has been hanging around the top 10 all season. The Blue Devils had a slide in the middle of conference play, but tweaking the lineup seems to have worked (except when facing North Carolina) in sparking them to yet another ACC Tournament Championship.

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There is no team in the major conferences that plays a slower tempo than Washington State. Heck, there is only one team nationally that plays a slower tempo than the Cougars. UCLA has been experimenting with playing faster, despite coach Ben Howland's general tendencies, and up until recently it had been effective.

As much as anything, though, the speed advantage isn't everything; the UCLA defense still had to do enough. That came to a crashing thud against Washington State. UCLA did force the Cougars to play at a much faster tempo than they are comfortable, but Washington State came away with a 82-81 win at Pauley Pavilion.

Talk about a program needing some good news right now. Talented UCLA senior running back Kahlil Bell, who tore his ACL eight games into the 2007 season, was starting to become a big worry for his status heading into 2008. But late word from Inside UCLA's Brian Dohn has Bell looking ready to roll on the eve of fall camp. Now he's not all the way back, participating in seven-on-seven drills and the like, but he's getting there.

Technically, Bell has not been medically cleared to practice, but he told me recently he expects that to happen in early August, when he is examined by the UCLA doctors.

Bell was a big bright spot on the UCLA offense last year, rushing for 795 yards with a team-high 5.6 yards per carry in '07. He's got excellent size at a physical 6-0, 206, and is the best big-play threat on the UCLA offense.

But the real worry is what Bell will see when he actually gets the football in game situations this season. UCLA's offensive line is in tatters, with just one starter back in 2008. The recent loss of projected starting right tackle Sean Sheller only complicated things. Add in QB Ben Olson still slowly coming back from a broken foot, and you can imagine Bell will see nothing but defenses stacking the line of scrimmage to try and take him out of the offensive equation. Norm Chow might be the "Yoda" of NCAA offensive coordinators, but he might start asking what he's gotten himself into with this UCLA job.

Last year, the University of California at Los Angeles went through four starting quarterbacks in a season which failed to meet expectations. New head coach Rick Neuheisel and offensive coordinator Norm Chow had hoped to turn the tide and avoid any quarterback controversy, naming Pat Cowan the starter in Spring Practice.

But just days after fifth-stringer Osaar Rashaan declared that he would start again as UCLA quarterback, he moved up to number three on the depth chart when Cowan and Ben Olson were carted off the field with injuries. Cowan, the erstwhile starter, will miss the 2008 season; Olson must recover from yet another surgery.

Things have gotten so bad that UCLA's coaches are now asking recruit Kevin Prince to leave school early in order to provide depth at the position. But Prince is still recovering from reconstructive knee surgery himself, so don't expect this high schooler to be a lucky charm to avoid injuries at the position!

But if things look glum in Westwood, Bruin fans can take consolation that they did not lose seven first- and second-round players to the NFL Draft!

If anyone is having a rougher week than USC head coach Pete Carroll, it is UCLA coach Karl Dorrell. While Carroll was taking accountability for the Trojans' loss to Stanford with alumni on Monday, the Bruin head coach went into hiding.

According to the Los Angeles Times, " Requests to interview Dorrell on Monday night were turned away with the explanation that he could not be located."

If we were Dorrell, we'd go into hiding, too. His starting quarterback Ben Olson has been lost for the season with a knee injury. Backup Pat Cowan was already sidelined with a similar injury.

When Olson went down against winless Notre Dame, Dorrell was faced with three bad choices--play walkon McLeod Bethel-Thomspon, switch Osaar Rasshan back to the quarterback position he played for his first two years in Westwood or take the red shirt off of highly-touted frosh Chris Forcier.

If Cowan cannot recover in time for the Bruins' October 20 matchup with California, Dorrell will have to make the same decision again--and have some explaining to do if he diverts from the course chosen against the Irish.

The last time Patrick Cowan started a game at the Rose Bowl, his wild scrambling led the UCLA Bruins to a 13-9 victory over cross-town rival USC. On Saturday, he will try to dig back into his magic bag of tricks when he starts as the Bruin quarterback against the Washington Huskies.

Starting QB Ben Olson has been suffering from headaches all week since getting battered by the Utah Utes and the effects were apparently too much for Southpaw Jesus. As a result, Head coach Karl Dorrell has to give a new meaning to "second choice" in Westwood as he must rely on his backup quarterback for the second season in a row.

As for Cowan, he seems to have recovered from a preseason hamstring injury which sidelined him during fall camp.

With his players suffering more concussions that Troy Aikman, Coach Dorrell has a new policy banning bloggers from writing about injuries during practice until he can comment.

Usually when College Football fans hear "blackout" they think of some Thursday night football game in the Big East or ACC where the home team wears all-black jerseys and ask all the fans to don black to the night game as well.

In the case of the October 20th UCLA-Cal game, the words "black out" will have a whole new meaning. Former Google spokesman and environmental activist Nate Tyler is asking everyone in San Francisco to go without electricity for one hour between 8 PM and 9 PM that Saturday night.

If the game is selected as ABC's West Coast game of the week--which is likely since USC will be playing on the Notre-Dame Broadcasting Channel and this game will determine second place in the Pac Ten--that 8 PM to 9 PM time slot will coincide with the game's Fourth Quarter. Not that it matters. Winner goes to the Holiday Bowl.

Environmental Hippiness and the Cal Bears Previously On Fanhouse:
Wonderful Treetards Allowed to Remain in Precious, Irreplacable Old Forest
What Y'all Doin' in That Tree? and Other Lingering SEC Questions, Week 1
Cal's Hippiegate Gets Worse
Cal Held Hostage By Hippies: Hupdate
Hippies Block Cal Stadium Expansion

Just a year and a half into the marriage between UCLA football head coach Karl Dorrell and transfer quarterback Ben Olson, the relationship seems to be on the rocks.

More reminiscent of a marriage going on its tenth year, Olson is denying Dorrell his services on account of "headaches."

Dorrell tells the Los Angeles Times, "Ben has a headache and he's had this headache since Saturday night," and that backup quarterback Pat Cowan has been leading the Bruins in practice.

Given that only Nebraska's Sam Keller spent more time on the carpet than Olson on Saturday, some are speculating that the headaches may be related to a concussion which may have Olson on the sideline for more than one night.

While the UCLA Bruins entered their 2007 Fall Camp with a quarterback controversy--start acclaimed transfer Ben Olson or go with the conqueror of Troy Pat Cowan--Bruin head Coach Karl Dorrell has another dilemma on his hands--finding a backup for B.O.

The Bruins' number two quarterback Pat Cowan went down to injury Monday after hurting his hamstring in practice leaving only a walk-on to fill in should the injury-susceptible Olson be injured.

Walk-on redshirt freshman McLeod Bethel-Thompson will fill the number-two job and is bittersweet about the opportunity: "It's unfortunate, I don't know what happened to him," Bethel-Thompson told the Los Angeles Times. "But I saw Pat go down, and it's my chance."

After the backup's backup proceeded to fuble his first snap then have a pass batted down, Dorrell struggled to assess Bethel-Thompson's strengths, saying, ""We'll figure that one out." Indeed.