UCLA football team looks to regroup, but not forget, after tough loss to Indiana

LOS ANGELES — The UCLA football team hasn’t forgotten what happened in Saturday’s 42-13 loss to Indiana.

But there’s no time to waste on the past. A road test against No. 16 LSU awaits them this Saturday.

“We have a big road game this week, so we can’t just sit back and rest on our laurels,” running back TJ Harden said after practice Monday. “We can’t just dwell on that last game, we just have to move on. It’s still early in the season, we still have a chance to redeem ourselves and move forward.”

There are, however, lessons to be learned from the defeat.

Coach DeShaun Foster wants the team to remember that feeling of frustration in the locker room after the game against Indiana.

The first-year head coach implored his players to “keep their emotions to themselves” so they remember what they felt.

The hope is that the desire to avoid that feeling again will motivate the team not only against LSU this weekend, but for the rest of the season.

“We’re all competitors on this team. We just don’t want to feel the same way again. We just use that pain, lean on it,” defensive tackle Sitiveni Havili Kaufusi said. “Like Coach Foster says, you just have to bottle that emotion up and use it every day to motivate you for the rest of the year.”

Kaufusi said the players were discouraged for a short while after the game, but then leaned on each other to lift everyone’s spirits.

Jay Toia, one of the leaders of the defense, gathered the group to discuss the result further after the coaches finished giving their post-game speeches.

Toia stressed to his teammates that they must play for each other and remember the pain of defeat, so as not to relive it.

“Everybody was upset, the locker room wasn’t very happy. A lot of guys were sad, frustrated, but I think the good news is we came together as a team,” Kaufusi said. “Jay (Toia) brought us together after the game, after we finished talking to the coaches. We had all the leaders come out and put their two cents in on what we need to change moving forward and make sure we never have that feeling again.”

The players had the day off Sunday, but Foster said a majority of the team came to the complex to review film from the previous day’s game.

He was glad they took it upon themselves to come on an off day, wanting to improve the execution of the game plan.

“They’re really looking forward to getting back here. Just the fact that most of the guys came here and finished the film yesterday on their day off, I was glad they did,” Foster said. “We didn’t have to call them to come, they were all looking forward to doing it themselves. We’ve got the right type of kids. I just think it was an unfortunate game, it happens.”

UCLA is now preparing to face LSU (2-1), an SEC powerhouse that has beaten Nicholls State and South Carolina (narrowly) since losing its opener to USC, 27-20, in Las Vegas. And the schedule only gets tougher with No. 9 Oregon and No. 10 Penn State in the weeks that follow.

“We all feel it, everybody in the building, so we lean on the players. We always tell each other to lean on each other when we’re feeling down,” Kaufusi said. “We’ve all moved on a little bit, we’ve got somebody else that’s bothering us this week. But whenever we feel that way, we use it in a positive way. I think our team can do that by reminding each other to be positive and encouraging each other.”

Originally published: September 16, 2024 at 2:23 p.m.