Decided last night to take a look ahead to 2012, because with UCLA going 5-1 at home, I was wondering how much of that was the home-cooking, and how much of it was the competition, and how it lined up for next year.
Here’s the schedule:
Non-Conference
At Rice
Home Nebraska
Home Houston
Conference (not scheduled yet)
Home Oregon State
Home Stanford
At Washington State
Home Arizona
At Cal
At Arizona State
Home Utah
At Colorado
Home USC
In terms of the opponents, you would project wins over Rice and a Case Keenum-less Houston and a loss to Nebraska. We don’t know when the conference schedule will play out, so for the sake of argument lets take this year’s games and just flip them.
So there’s an abundantly beatable OSU at home, an Andrew Luck-less Stanford at home, an abundantly beatable WSU on the road, a wholly confusing Arizona team at home, visits to Cal and Arizona State (with Brock Osweiler), a home tilt with Utah (with John White), a visit to Colorado and a home matchup with USC (Barkley or not Barkley, that is the question).
POTENTIAL LINEUP in semi-projected order
QB: RSSR Prince, SR Brehaut, RSFR Hundley
RB: RSSR Franklin, JR Jones, RSSO James
WR: RSJR Evans, RSFR Lucien, RSSR Johnson
WR: SR Carroll, RSJR Marvray
TE: RSSR Fauria, RSSO Young, RSFR Nelson
F-Back: JR Barr, RSJR Thigpen
LT: SO Su’a-Filo, RSSR Bradford
LG: JR Ward, RSSO Yandall
C: RSJR Capella, RSFR Brendel
RG: RSJR Cid, RSFR Wysocki
RT: RSSR Baca, RSSR Downey
DE: RSSR Holmes, RSJR Graham
DT: JR Marsh, RSSR Carter, JR Epenesa
DT: RSSR Jones, RSSO Willis, RSFR McReynolds
DE: JR Owa, RSJR Tepa
LB: RSSO Kendricks, RSSO Olaniyan
LB: RSSR Larimore, RSJR Bowens, RSJR Golper
LB: JR Zumwalt, RSSR Allen
CB: SR Price, RSSR Abbott
S: RSSO McDonald, RSJR Mascarenas
S: SR Hilliard, JR Riley, RSJR McKay
CB: RSSR Hester, RSSO Jefferson, RSSO Sermons
P: RSSR Locke
K: RSSO Smith or ?
In my “projected” two-deep – and we really have no idea how advanced Brett Hundley is going to be next year, so I’m going to leave Prince and Brehaut ahead of him – that’s an average of 3.8 years of college football experience per player.
UCLA “projects” to have 13 redshirt seniors in the two-deep, 13 seniors or redshirt juniors, 14 juniors or redshirt sophomores and four sophomores or redshirt freshmen, which is a pretty good breakdown in terms of experience.
That seems like an eight- or nine-win team to me, at least. If you pencil in potential losses to Nebraska, Stanford and USC, and one slip-up game, that’s eight wins.
What do you think?