PASADENA, Calif. — It took a while and a bit of a scare, but UCLA opened a season featuring high expectations with a 45-17 win over Bowling Green on Saturday, as a record-low 27,143 fans made the trip to the Rose Bowl in triple-digit temperatures.
UCLA trailed 17-7 at one point, but outscored Bowling Green — the first MAC team to play in the Rose Bowl in the FBS era — 38-0 the rest of the way for a season-opening win. The Bruins put up more than 600 yards of offense, and the defense pitched a shutout in the second half.
Head coach Chip Kelly said his team dug themselves a hole, but didn’t continue to keep digging.
“We don’t have preseason games,” Kelly said. “When you’re in a practice situation and someone makes a mistake, you do it over. You don’t get do-overs here. We did dig ourselves a little bit of a hole to start, but I was really proud of the way our guys responded.”
Dorian Thompson-Robinson was 32-of-43 passing for 298 yards and two touchdowns. He added 87 yards and two more touchdowns on the ground, with his eight-yard score on the first play of the fourth quarter putting the game away. Zach Charbonnet opened the season with 111 yards on 21 carries with a touchdown.
The Bruins dominated the stat sheet, but early mishaps forced them to play from behind for much of the first half. UCLA committed two turnovers in the first quarter, a blocked punt returned for a touchdown and a Thompson-Robinson interception in which he threw the ball right to the defender, along with another turnover on downs.
“I can’t stop thinking about the pick,” said Thompson-Robinson, despite amassing nearly 400 yards of total offense. “I’m going to be super, super critical about that, making sure to clean up those mistakes, especially a lot of the stuff that happened in the first quarter.”
Bowling Green capitalized off the mistakes, with Charles Rosser scooping and scoring off the blocked punt from 11 yards out. Jake Bobo muffed a punt at his own 10-yard line, leading to a field goal. And early in the second quarter, McDonald dumped a 22-yard pass off to Christian Sims for a touchdown as part of an eight play, 73-yard drive.
But UCLA has an experienced team, with 21 players already graduated. To Thompson-Robinson, it was easy to respond to being down 17-7 in the first game of the season. Thompson-Robinson was proud of the maturity his team displayed.
“I think not only me being through this so many times, a lot of guys on this team have been through this so many times,” Thompson-Robinson said. “They know how to be college athletes.”
Thompson-Robinson had UCLA’s only big play early in the game, a 68-yard scamper for a touchdown that tied the game at 7 in the first quarter.
The Bruins looked more like themselves in the second quarter, taking the lead thanks to a pair of catch-and-run scores by Kazmeir Allen and Keegan Jones for a 24-17 halftime lead.
Linebacker Carl Jones described a “don’t flinch” mentality on the sidelines.
“Honestly, I wasn’t even looking at the scoreboard,” Jones said. “If a play happened, we kept pushing. Defense didn’t flinch. Offense didn’t flinch.”
UCLA held Bowling Green to 162 yards of total offense. The defense, in its first game under new defensive coordinator Bill McGovern, impressed Kelly. The Bruins were able to disrupt Bowling Green quarterback Matt McDonald, a Newport Beach native who starred at Mission Viejo High School.
McDonald was 17 of 34 with 125 yards passing and a touchdown.
“I thought our back end did a really good job from a coverage standpoint and I thought our rush got home,” Kelly said. “So I think that was my first takeaway, just watching how our defense performed today.”
Charbonnet punched in a 4-yard touchdown run on UCLA’s opening drive of the second half. It was a drive that featured him heavily with five runs and a pass reception.
UCLA pulled Thompson-Robinson and Charbonnet midway through the fourth quarter, with backup quarterback Ethan Garbers playing the rest of the way.
In his first game adjusting to life without last year’s top receivers — Kyle Philips and Greg Dulcich — Thompson-Robinson found a new favorite target. He threw to Allen 13 times, and Allen delivered with 10 catches for 85 yards and a touchdown.
“I am trying to spread the ball as much as possible,” Thompson-Robinson said. “Obviously, with his speed and what he brings to the table, it’s hard not to get him the ball.”
Allen said it feels good to be thrown to that many times, but revealed that UCLA didn’t “show too much” with the offense.
“It feels good, just being there every down and still having the ability to hit a home run,” Allen said.
Kelly told his players after the game that his goal was to make Saturday’s game the worst game of the season. He thought his team played with good effort and responded accordingly to mistakes.
“We have things we have to get better at, and I think that’s what college football is,” Kelly said. “We will not be the same team at the end of the year than we are at the beginning of the year.”
