Monday Media Day II: Hopeful for Cowan

UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell knew what the primary question was on everyone’s mind at Monday afternoon’s news conference at the Morgan Center: Who will play quarterback for the Bruins on Saturday against Cal?

"We still aren’t for certain about the answer, but we’re hopeful that Pat Cowan will be that quarterback," Dorrell said.

Dorrell held Cowan out of UCLA’s bye-week workouts, "to strengthen his knee and get his conditioning back." If Cowan is able to practice, he’ll be the starter.

"If it doesn’t go as planned," Dorrell said, "we have Mac [McLeod Bethel-Thompson], who you saw two weeks ago play in the place of Ben [Olson], and also we have Osaar Rashaan who we’re looking at and Chris Forcier, who we’re also looking at and who we did a lot of work with during the bye week."

On Olson, Dorrell said, "He had a little bit of an LCL [left collateral ligament] tear that they did some repair with" and he’s still expected to miss about another three weeks.

But what happened against Notre Dame?

"Really, the turnovers," said Dorrell. "A lot of those [seven] turnovers occurred in our end of the field, which puts our defense in a very difficult situation. It’s hard to win any game when you have turnovers of that magnitude. We still have some problems with our penalties, so we have been addressing those two issues in particular this last week and will continue to do that.

"We have to coach better and put our players in position who are able to make the plays. We might have put a little bit too much on certain guys in that particular game and that’s a mistake that we cannot afford to make at this point and moving on in the future."

Dorrell noted, however, that the Bruins are "in really good position, even though we’re at 4-2, but we’re 3-0 in conference with nothing but conference games left."

"We’re excited about Cal and what this opportunity can bring for us and to keep our goals and aspirations still intact, it has to happen this week with some success against Cal and having a great game plan to come [out] with a victory."

He said "our secondary will match up pretty well" with Cal’s dangerous receivers, especially DeSean Jackson, Robert Jordan and Lavelle Hawkins. "We had a little bit of a rough start at the beginning of the season, coverage-wise, but those things have been shored up the last couple of games and our team is playing very confident on the defensive side right now."

There was a long list of injuries to go over:

>> On the offense, running back Khalil Bell (sore shoulder) should be fine, but Chris Markey is still "hobbling" from a turf toe injury and whether he plays against Cal will be known only after this week’s practices. Receivers Marcus Everett and Dominique Johnson both had ankle sprains, but should be ready to go.

>> On defense, Dorrell said linebacker Reggie Carter’s arthroscopic knee surgery went well and he could be ready to play. Defensive lineman Brigham Harwell (left knee) is "not likely" to return this week. Neither are defensive tackle Chase Moline (headaches) or linebacker Shawn Oatis (vertebrae microfracture), but linebacker John Hale (concussion) should be ready. It’s not yet clear whether defensive end Nikola Dragovic (no labrum tear in his hip, but possibly a sports hernia) will be able to go Saturday.

Karl Dorrell photo courtesy UCLA.

Comments

[uclart47]

I frequently don't agree with Petros Papadakis but he was absolutely right when he said Bethel-Thompson should never see the field again. The crime of the ND game was the coach apparently had no plan to deal with an injury to Olson. This despite the fact that either Olson or Cowan has been out every game this year.
So Karl thinks that 3-0 league record is pretty good? Yeah, except they haven't played any of the 4 ranked teams and the 2 winnable games are both in tough road locations. Kind of like the guy who falls off the tall building and half way down says, "So far so good."

[ForReal1]

Karl is always selling and we are NOT buying !! It's all Bogus optimism.
We better hope that Cowan can start and finish the game or our inexperienced back-up QB's will take their lumps again in a shameful game. Unfortunately, Dorrell's complicated offense is a constant negative with the QB options that we have left. Bruins ,just hope for the best. Regardless of the outcome , It's time to GO Karl you dumpling !!