An underwhelming performance by the Ducks over a determined UCLA team was the end product of Saturday night's encounter in Eugene. For almost the entire game, the Ducks had the lead and held the Bruins at arms length, but could never quite put the visitors away until game's end.
Some of the "bizarro" aspects of the game: Duck quarterback Jeremiah Masoli rushed for 170 yards on 24 carries to lead the Ducks offensive attack. On the other side of the coin, he connected on just 5 of 19 passes for 42 yards (24 coming on one touchdown pass, 11 on another) for one of the most woeful passing efforts seen at Autzen in a long while. Of course, it didn't help matters when a number of balls he threw were dropped by the receivers, but the lack of consistency in developing drives certainly worked to the advantage of the UCLA defense.
It wasn't just Ducks on the offensive side unable to catch a thrown ball, it seemed like there were at least 5 opportunities there for Duck defenders to thwart UCLA drives, only to let the ball slip through their hands, almost as if they couldn't quite believe that Bruin quarterback Kevin Craft would've thrown the ball straight to them.
More worryingly, the Ducks missed their first two field goal efforts (Matt Evenson made his third) on seemingly convertible kicks, although it seemed to me that the snap on the first one was low.
Bruin coach Rick Neuheisel, seeming to know that he was outmanned for this game, called for a review on the spot of the ball very early on, which he subsequently lost and was charged a time out for, and then attempted an onside kickoff early in the third quarter after the Bruins had scored their first touchdown to cut the Duck lead to 14-7. An offside ruling negated the Bruin recovery of the ball, which lead to a short field for the Ducks to score their third touchdown of the game that made the score 21 to 7.
The Bruins cut the lead to 21 to 14 on their next drive after an interception of a Craft pass in the endzone by Jairus Byrd was nullified and Byrd was given a pass interference penalty instead, replays to the contrary notwithstanding much to the displeasure of Duck fans watching the scoreboard; Kahlil Bell, who had been helped off the field earlier, ran the ball from the two yard line near the end of the third quarter.
Things turned really awkward on the next Bruin possession near the beginning of the fourth quarter; a deflected Craft pass off of Terrence Austin landed in the hands of Byrd, a hit from T.J. Ward on Austin, who was leaping to catch a high Craft pass, created the opportunity for Byrd to make the play. Quite unfortunately, Austin landed awkwardly on his head and laid on the turf for a few mintues, although in the immediate minutes after the hit, he was able to make movements in a significant fashion, it was the hope of those watching that the stillness of his movements once the trainers had arrived were purely of a cautionary measure.
At almost the same time, from my location on the north side in section 13, from the corner of my eye I noticed some activity across the field from me as a couple of bodies were in motion falling down toward the field. A fight between a couple of Duck fans resulted in an unfortunate incident where the two of them spilled over a sideline barrier and one of them landed on his neck apparently; that man was subsequently carted off the field in a brace while the other man was carted off by the police. The combination of events took about 13 minutes as the Autzen crowd, still rightly upset by the blown call at the end of the third quarter, descended into an eerie silence, at first from the fervent hope that Austin was not seriously injured, and secondly trying to figure out what was happening behind the Bruin bench.
As odd as it may sound, in all of my years as a season ticker holder on the north side, I had never really noticed that section of the stadium before, and about half an hour before, for the first time, I had noticed some people running along the length of the barriers behind the vistors bench and wondered aloud why they were allowed to do so, the barriers being at least six feet above the field level below.
The Ducks got a field goal out of this exchange to give themselves a two-score lead, which would prove to be the decisive factor in this game. The teams exchanged punts for most of the rest of the fourth quarter, until LaGarrette Blound broke a tackle and ran down the right sideline for 69 yards to give the Ducks a 31-17 lead with three minutes to go in the game; some lazy defending by the Ducks in the remaining time allowed the Bruins to score their last touchdown, and a final onside kickoff by UCLA was recovered by the Ducks to seal the victory.
ESPN
No comments:
Post a Comment