UCLA knows the record next to Michigan State’s name does not make this a stroll.
The Spartans arrive in Los Angeles on a five-game skid, but the two most recent losses were tight ones, both coming by three points or fewer against Illinois and Northwestern. That’s enough warning for UCLA coach Bob Chesney, who has seen how quickly a game can tilt if his team lets Michigan State’s run game get rolling.
That starts with Jaziun Patterson, the Iowa transfer who has been a force the last two weeks. He ran for 72 yards against Northwestern and followed that with 93 yards and three touchdowns against Illinois. At 5-foot-10 and 214 pounds, Patterson brings the kind of edge Chesney was quick to spotlight.
“You watch him in some big games, just the violence he plays with,” Chesney said of the 5-foot-10, 214-pound senior. “He’s downhill, and if he gets a little seam, he’s able to be explosive.
And at the end of the run, he punishes. He’s not looking to go down; he’s not looking to get out of bounds.
They open up holes nicely for him.”
No. 9 UCLA, now 6-0 overall and 4-0 in the Big Ten, meets Michigan State, which is 2-5 and 0-4, at 12:30 p.m. at the Rose Bowl. The Bruins are favored by 13.5 points, according to Oddschecker, and the rankings have only sharpened the spotlight on them.
Last week, UCLA handled Wisconsin 17-7 at home, and senior quarterback Ty Dieffenbach did his part with 22 completions on 33 attempts for 264 yards. The Bruins’ defense also smothered Wisconsin’s passing game, holding the Badgers to 66 yards through the air.
Dieffenbach had to make plays that mattered even when they didn’t end in the end zone. One of the biggest came early in the fourth quarter, when UCLA was pinned at its own 3-yard line and he connected with Landon Ellis on a 28-yard gain.
Chesney said the development of Dieffenbach and the rest of the roster has been built well before Saturdays like this one.
“It’s seasonal,” Chesney said. “So your winter is laying your foundation for you to get into spring.
Spring is now introducing more football but the style in the ‘how’ not the ‘what,’ but the ‘how’ is certainly developed. That’s your first interaction of putting in this playbook.
“You get into the summer, and it comes with a lot of conditioning. That builds your cardio, the things that come along with your fitness and strength and all the things you need to play this game. That becomes a building block for your body because you’re not going to get faster or stronger during the season.”
For UCLA, the grind that produced 6-0 happened long before the rankings and the expectations. Chesney said the work in winter, spring and summer practices - the reps, the conditioning, the strength building - is what shows up now.
And that same structure, he said, is what keeps the Bruins steady when the pressure of staying near the top of the rankings starts to build.
“That’s something that remains about the same,” Chesney said. “There’s a flow to the year, but there’s a flow within those weeks within the segments of the year, and that’s what ultimately got to do with it.
We have a blueprint. We tweak it here and there, but ultimately we know what we are doing; we know how many reps we want to get out here, and we just trust we need to do.
Just trust that it’s all built the right way through psychology, sports science and reps.”
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