{"id":54932,"date":"2025-11-15T21:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T21:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/54932\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T21:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T21:30:13","slug":"nico-iamaleava-out-for-ucla-vs-ohio-state-because-of-a-concussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/54932\/","title":{"rendered":"Nico Iamaleava out for UCLA vs. Ohio State because of a concussion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

All those hits finally caught up with Nico Iamaleava<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After absorbing one punishing blow after another, the UCLA<\/a> quarterback will miss Saturday\u2019s game against top-ranked Ohio State<\/a> at Ohio Stadium because of concussion symptoms related to hits he sustained last weekend against Nebraska, a person with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly said.<\/p>\n

Iamaleava was participating in the early portion of practice Tuesday, the last session observed by reporters this week.<\/p>\n

His absence against the Buckeyes presumably means that top backup Luke Duncan<\/a>, a redshirt sophomore who has never thrown a pass at the college level, will make his first career start.<\/p>\n

Iamaleava\u2019s ability to take hits and keep on playing had been a major topic of discussion early this week between reporters and UCLA interim coach Tim Skipper<\/a>. The quarterback was easily his team\u2019s leading rusher, his average of 52.7 yards per game nearly doubling the output of running back Jaivian Thomas<\/a> (30.8), the team\u2019s second-leading rusher.<\/p>\n

Skipper had praised Iamaleava\u2019s fearlessness, saying the 6-foot-6, 215-pound redshirt sophomore didn\u2019t want to slide or run out of bounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cNico\u2019s the first like tall, skinny dude that I know that will lower the pads on you and is not afraid, he\u2019s going to always be going forward and getting yards and things like that,\u201d Skipper said Monday. \u201cHe\u2019s got little legs and skinny arms but has no fear at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skipper also acknowledged the need to preserve Iamaleava\u2019s availability by preventing him from taking more hits than necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, he\u2019s your starting quarterback,\u201d Skipper said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want him taking big hits and things like that, but if they\u2019re going to give him running lanes, you might as well take them. I kid with him all the time, \u2018Hey every now and then, you might want to slide a little bit.\u2019 But you know, when you have a natural runner like he is, you kind of just let them go do their thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immediately after UCLA\u2019s 28-21 loss to Nebraska<\/a>, Iamaleava did not indicate that all the hits he had taken affected his performance. He completed 17 of 25 passes for 191 yards and two touchdowns without an interception while also running 15 times for 86 yards.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah man, shoot, I\u2019ve played football a long time and I\u2019ve gotten hit a lot of times in many games,\u201d Iamaleava said. \u201cSo, I don\u2019t think it affected me in that way. Overall, we just gotta play better as a whole and finish games.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All those hits finally caught up with Nico Iamaleava. After absorbing one punishing blow after another, the UCLA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[30133,423,1049,48,52,51,47,50,49,17677,34261,24288,11491,5408,34262,427,4610,315,1092,430,1539],"class_list":["post-54932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-concussion","tag-game","tag-hit","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-nebraska","tag-nico-iamaleava","tag-ohio-state","tag-quarterback","tag-reporter","tag-skipper","tag-team","tag-thing","tag-time","tag-ucla","tag-week","tag-yard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}