Quotables: Rick Neuheisel

Opening Statement:
"We had a great meeting last night talking about our goals and aspirations for the upcoming season. I did mention to them where the prognosticators had us located, at the No. 8 spot in our conference. Hopefully we're going to be better than that. I know we can be. I know there will be a lot of work involved in terms of dealing with a very rigorous schedule. But we're anxious to get back into a conference title race."

On big plays:
"We can't beat ourselves on either side of the ball. We just can't turn it over. We look back, just bringing up one game, the Oregon game, and there we were giving up a kickoff return and an interception return in a game that was back and forth, and all of a sudden we're out of the game."

On the running game:
"In the last couple years we've talked about the issues with our running game. That's going to be a huge point of emphasis. It's the reason we had to change, the reason we had to find some other answers. We couldn't just play a pat hand when the hand wasn't a winner. We've incorporated a measure of the Pistol offense, borrowed from Nevada. Hopefully we can put our own spin on it and have people calling it something more synonymous with UCLA. Running the football is pivotal to success."