PASADENA, Calif. — UCLA interim head coach Tim Skipper and his first-time offensive coordinator, Jerry Neuheisel, won the biggest games of their coaching lives on Saturday when their previously winless Bruins upset Penn State 42-37 at the Rose Bowl. It goes without saying that both were overjoyed during their postgame news conference.
“We wanted to control the game,” Skipper said. “That’s why we wanted to run the ball, and it all starts with the big boys up front. They have to control the line of scrimmage. They were creating openings. We know their D-line and linebackers are really really good, so we had to put bodies on those guys. We just wanted to control it one play at a time, just take it one play at a time, and that’s exactly what we did.
“We actually have never talked about not leading for a game, somebody told me about it, that’s how I knew. We never talked about it or anything, we just went out there and played ball today. We just went out there and took the lead, and fortunately for us we kept it.”
The Bruins were better than the Nittany Lions from start to finish. That is not up for debate. The right team won on this day. And the one that didn’t has much to figure out moving forward.
“College football is crazy in multiple ways,” Skipper said. “You just take whatever happens each day and you keep on striving to stay on the rise. I’m a passionate, emotional, energetic type guy, and that’s what I bring every single day. You never have a bad day unless you declare it a bad day. Every day is a good day if you want it to be good. Stay positive, figure out solutions, and you keep on rolling. Staying on the rise is a big thing to me, and that is what we have been doing.”
The visiting media area was dejected, as you can probably imagine. Each week, Blue-White Illustrated provides a sample of what Penn State players had to say after the game. Here is this week’s installment:
“I think we all gotta take accountability, just try and learn. It’s a tough loss, but everybody’s gotta look in the mirror.”
-PSU DE Dani Dennis-Sutton
“There’s no other group that I’d rather be in this situation with. I know for me personally, I’m going to take it day-by- day and put 100% of my effort into doing whatever I need to do to get us right. I can promise that I will do everything in my power to put my heart and soul into it to help us come out with a different outcome each week.
“Just keep taking day-by-day and not looking into the future or looking into the past. What we can control is our actions from now until tomorrow morning, learn from it, flush it, then come out with the attitude of just swinging. Our backs are against the wall, so we have to come out swinging every day.”
-Penn State QB Drew Allar
“You just got to be able to come back and regroup. Just got to be able to put our heads back on our shoulders and go 1-0, and that’s really what we got to do, and not let anything distract us, or get in our way, and be able to do just do our job.”
