If this was goodbye, it was a sad sendoff.<\/p>\n
There were lost fumbles, a laughably bad fake field goal that resulted in a touchdown for the other team and a dropped pass that probably cost UCLA<\/a> its own score. And that was just in the first half.<\/p>\n Adding injury to insult, UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava<\/a> took a crunching hit that sidelined him late in the third quarter, ending his gritty return from a concussion that had forced him to miss his team\u2019s last game.<\/p>\n UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava passes in the first half against Washington on Saturday night.<\/p>\n (Eric Thayer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n There\u2019s mercifully only one game left for the Bruins this season after a 48-14 loss to Washington<\/a> on Saturday night led to a fast-emptying stadium, no fond farewells in store for the home fans amid an announced crowd of 38,201 that was too depleted by game\u2019s end to boo.<\/p>\n The site of UCLA\u2019s next home game remains as big of an unknown as its next head coach. School officials have said they are still contemplating plans for where the team will play in the future, though that decision could be up to a court to decide given the Bruins have nearly two decades left on a Rose Bowl lease that doesn\u2019t expire until the summer of 2044.<\/p>\n It\u2019s believed that if school officials have their way, they will move to SoFi Stadium<\/a> in time for their 2026 season opener. UCLA defensive back Cole Martin, a native of Pasadena, did not seem happy about the possibility of abandoning the Rose Bowl as his home stadium.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Rose Bowl means a lot to me,\u201d said Martin, whose interception in the second quarter was one of only a handful of big plays for the Bruins. \u201cIt makes me emotional thinking about it. It\u2019s everything to me, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Wherever the Bruins play next season, they have a lot of improvements to make. They looked lethargic in falling behind 34-0 on Saturday while making one mistake after another on the way to a fourth consecutive defeat.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just couldn\u2019t stop the bleeding, you know?\u201d UCLA interim coach Tim Skipper<\/a> said.<\/p>\n By the time he entered the game, there was little backup quarterback Luke Duncan<\/a> could do except make the final score slightly more palatable. He succeeded on that front, firing a 37-yard touchdown pass to Mikey Matthews<\/a> late in the third quarter that helped UCLA (3-8 overall, 3-5 Big Ten) avoid a shutout.<\/p>\n There was another highlight for the Bruins early in the fourth quarter when Kanye Clark<\/a> forced a fumble on Washington\u2019s punt return, allowing Jamir Benjamin<\/a> to pick up the ball and run 13 yards for a touchdown.<\/p>\n But make no mistake: This was complete domination by the Huskies (8-3, 5-3), who rolled up 426 yards of offense while holding the Bruins to 207 yards, including just 57 yards rushing.<\/p>\n Washington alumnus and comedian Joel McHale<\/a> performed a short recorded bit that was shown on the scoreboard before the game, but the real slapstick was about to come.<\/p>\n The Bruins coughed up two fumbles in the first half and would have lost a third had the Huskies not been called for defensive holding on the play, nullifying the turnover.<\/p>\n \u201cTurnovers are always going to kill you,\u201d Skipper said, \u201cso we\u2019ve got to find a way to fix that as we get into next week.\u201d<\/p>\n UCLA quarterback Luke Duncan throws during the second half against Washington on Saturday.<\/p>\n (Eric Thayer \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n UCLA wide receiver Titus Mokiao-Atimalala<\/a> dropped what could have been a touchdown pass at the Huskies\u2019 38-yard line with nothing but open field in front of him.<\/p>\n But there was no blunder quite like what happened when the Bruins lined up for a 46-yard field goal late in the second quarter. Holder Cash Peterman<\/a> took the snap and flipped the ball over his shoulder as kicker Mateen Bhaghani<\/a> circled behind him, the ball hitting the turf instead of Bhaghani\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n Washington\u2019s Alex McLaughlin picked up the ball and ran 59 yards for a touchdown that put the Huskies ahead, 20-0.<\/p>\n Skipper said the Huskies showed one look in their field-goal defense before shifting out of it prior to the snap, causing chaos for the Bruins.<\/p>\n \u201cThe communication on our end got all jacked up when they stemmed out of it,\u201d Skipper said, \u201cso I\u2019ll take the heat for it \u2014 it was probably too complicated, it was too much communication and we miscommunicated and that\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Things never got appreciably better, the Bruins left adrift without a haven in sight.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/zCfr0TBWhiE\/hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Somebody should check with SoFi Stadium to see if it rescinded its offer. In what could have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4472,8932,11153,774,39730,48,52,51,22675,47,50,49,39731,772,278,5712,14921,780,1092,558,1539],"class_list":["post-66677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ball","tag-bruins","tag-first-half","tag-fumble","tag-huskies","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-game","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-other-team","tag-pass","tag-season","tag-sofi-stadium","tag-third-quarter","tag-touchdown","tag-ucla","tag-washington","tag-yard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66677","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=66677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}