Sports: UCLA vs. USC this Saturday

The game is at USC's home field and I'll not be trying to fetch the tickets.

The listed price at Stubhub ranges from $109 to $1200.

No one expected UCLA to win last year and last year's team was healthy!

This years team has been a MASH unit.

The latest news is that Olson who came in for the 2nd half of last weeks game has had knee trouble again. As such Cowan who has had knee trouble and is recovering from a collapsed lung has been taking the bulk of the snaps at practice. Rassan who started last weeks game but was pulled after going 0-7 passing with 1 int is the backup.

The LAT is running daily articles about the past rivalry games. Saw this one today.

Excerpt:

The year was 1992 and the Bruins had run through pretty much all of their quarterbacks, losing Wayne Cook, Rob Walker and Ryan Fien to injury. They were down to a fourth-string senior.

"He wasn't even on the team the previous year," Dellins said. "Coach [Terry] Donahue let him walk on."

Barnes responded with a magical night against the Trojans, throwing for 385 yards and three touchdowns. When 15th-ranked USC failed on a two-point conversion with less than a minute remaining, UCLA had a 38-37 upset victory.

Dellins loved that a no-name could, in the course of a few hours, become a star. He also liked the way Barnes responded afterward. The quarterback, known to live in a realm of his own, did not consider his Cinderella performance a big deal.

Interviewed on television after the game, he was asked what might have happened if USC had taken the lead on that conversion.

"Well," he responded plainly, "we'd have gone down the field and scored again."

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On the current UCLA team, the 4th string QB would be McLeod Bethel-Thompson. The walk-on QB played in the dismal loss to Notre Dame after Olson got hurt. The Fighting Irish decided to stack the line to stop the running game and blitz like crazy. The result, the shell-shocked Bethel-Thompson got sacked 4 times and threw 4 interceptions.

Can history repeat itself with a surprising victory on the arm of a 4th string QB?

Go Bruins!