The ramp toward the climactic conclusion to Ohio State’s 2025 season continues with a matchup against a team that’s had one of the most tumultuous years in the Big Ten.
UCLA
Bruins
UCLA rides into town with a 3-6 record, though all three of those victories have come in conference play. The Bruins have been dangerous when underestimated, shocking then-No. 7 Penn State 42-37 to begin a three-game Big Ten winning streak after an 0-4 start. The Bruins followed their win over the Nittany Lions with a 38-13 road blowout of Michigan State and a 20-17 victory over Maryland.
The Blue and Gold have gone cold since then, losing 56-6 to No. 2 Indiana and stumbling 28-21 at home against Nebraska. UCLA features one of the worst defenses in the Big Ten, but can be explosive and dynamic on offense, as evidenced by its hunting of the Nittany Lions.
Foster Care
Things truly went sideways if a head coach lasted just 15 games at a destination. That was the duration of DeShaun Foster’s UCLA tenure after he received his walking papers just three contests into the 2025 season, one of a gaggle of college coaches to be fired in-season this year.
The Foster experiment always seemed to be a questionable one. A legendary Bruins running back, he never held a title above running backs coach, filling that position for one year with Texas Tech in 2016 and seven with UCLA from 2017 through 2023. Then, head coach Chip Kelly left to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, and the administration elected to promote Foster straight from sergeant to general.
Kelly, despite much criticism by the end of his tenure, brought stability to Los Angeles, collecting three straight seasons of at least eight wins from 2021 through 2023. Doubts of Foster’s long-term prospects started from his second game, a 42-13 drubbing by Indiana (before everyone knew how good the program would be under Curt Cignetti). UCLA lost another four games in a row from there to start his first season 1-5.
The momentum of the Bruins’ ensuing three-game winning streak was wiped away by losses to Washington and USC. Their 2024 season closed at 5-7 without a bowl game berth. Then things took a turn for the ugly in Foster’s second campaign, which opened with a 43-10 demolition by Utah. Group of Five schools UNLV and New Mexico drove the final pair of nails into Foster’s coffin, the latter beating his squad by a 35-10 scoreline. He was fired the following day. Tim Skipper has been acting as interim head coach since.
Another Crack at Nico
Sonny Styles definitely wants another crack at former Tennessee turned UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava – that is, so Styles can crack Iamaleava’s helmet on Ohio State’s first defensive series while wearing No. 0, as Cody Simon did last year.
Iamaleava’s passing numbers from his redshirt freshman 2024 season to this 2025 campaign have declined, though that will happen when there’s a downgrade in talent around a player. His completion percentage has dipped from 63.8% to 63.2%, while his yards per attempt have dropped from 7.8 yards to 6.3. He has 1,468 passing yards and 10 touchdowns against seven interceptions.
Where he’s evolved is as a rushing threat, with better numbers across the board than in 2024. Iamaleava’s picked up 388 rushing yards at a clip of 4.8 yards per carry with four touchdowns this season. He hurt Penn State especially in that area, with 16 carries for 128 yards and three scores.
Ohio State linebackers Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles have been the Buckeyes’ trump card for mobile quarterbacks all season. They’ll have another test against Iamaleava.
Porous Defense
Being outside the top 110 nationally in scoring defense isn’t going to get your program to the places it wants to go. UCLA currently sits at 113th, allowing 31 points per game. It’s the worst scoring defense Ohio State has played yet this season, though next week the Buckeyes play the No. 114 scoring D in the country, Rutgers.
For the third week in a row, Ohio State faces one of the worst rushing defenses in the Big Ten. The Bruins are next to last in the conference for both rushing yards allowed per game (195.5) and per carry (5.2). Those numbers rank 124th and 128th nationally out of the FBS’ 136 teams. Once again, the only Big Ten team worse in yards-per-carry defense is Rutgers, which is the worst yards-per-carry defense in the country at 6.6.
Thus, again, the Buckeyes’ reeling run game gets a chance to make progress. They were a tick better against Purdue (also a bad run defense) with 170 yards on 43 carries, or four yards per attempt. For the season, Ohio State is a pedestrian 51st in yards per carry at 4.6.
UCLA is ranked 27th in passing yards allowed per game (185.6), though the Bruins still aren’t efficient in that area at 7.1 yards allowed per pass attempt, which is 72nd. Linebacker JonJon Vaughns has been the biggest bright spot, with a team-high 88 tackles and three tackles for loss. But Ohio State should expect another efficient offensive outing after scoring on six of its eight drives (excluding when it ran out the clock at the end of the game) against Purdue.
Ring the Bell
Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Despite hailing from the West Coast and spending most of its program’s lifetime in the Pac-12 conference, UCLA has a Big Ten identity in at least one way: It holds an annual rivalry game with a cool trophy attached. And like the other great rivalry trophies of the conference, the backstory is wacky.
UCLA and USC started their crosstown rivalry series in 1929 and have met every year since 1936. Teasing and vandalism pranks have been a longstanding part of their clash since the beginning, with Bruins at that time calling Trojan students “twigs” as an insult.
In 1941, the UCLA alumni association presented its football team with a 295-pound bell from a Southern Pacific Railroad engine to ring loud and proud after the team’s victories. But after USC won a home game against Washington State that season, some students stole the keys to the truck used to transport the bell and made away with it.
It triggered a streak of vandalism by Bruin and Trojan students on their rivals’ campuses. The madness came to a head in 1942 when kidnapping threats were made toward USC’s student body president if the bell was not returned. The Trojans agreed to bring it back, but only on the condition that it become a trophy taken home by the victor between the two schools on the football field.
Thus, the Victory Bell was born. The winner each season will paint the apparatus that holds it Blue or Cardinal, depending on who takes it home. USC holds a 51-34-7 all-time edge in the clash.
Cubs to Bruins
Featuring “Bears” as a nickname for an athletics team is unoriginal, unless a twist can be found. It took a few years, but UCLA got there.
UCLA started as the Cubs, which, through the early 20th century, was used as a bit of a submissive term to signify how small the school was. Obviously, that didn’t stick. So the athletics teams upgraded to “Grizzlies” in 1926, but then Montana, at the time a fellow member of the then-named Pacific Coastal Conference, started making fun of the university for copying their mascot.
At the time, Cal was using both Bears and Bruins (a folk name for a bear), but the student body at Berkeley elected to stick with Bears, soon to become Golden Bears, full-time and hand the Bruins moniker to UCLA. On second thought, I retract what I said about the nickname being original before. Nothing less original than an inherited nickname.
A live bear roamed the UCLA sidelines for a few decades before the athletics department opted for a student to bear a mascot outfit as one instead in the mid-1960s. She’s been dubbed Josephine the Bruin, named for the last live mascot that lived in the Rally Committee’s backyard (excuse me, what?) before the costumed one was adopted.
