Bruins by the Numbers: Stanford

All right, so I generated my first statistics for the 2007 season. Most of them came out right, but I think there are still a few bugs to work out. Anyways, you can see them on the right-hand side of blog. I have them up for all the PAC-10 teams, including the Bruins.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the number of big plays (i.e. 20+ yards). UCLA had 9 such plays against Stanford. That's almost triple the average of 3.2 big plays from last season. Obviously, those long strikes down field translated into a lot of yards and some touchdowns as well. The flip side of that number is Stanford's 4 big plays. That's a lot and I hope that number comes way down after we play BYU this Saturday.

The play calling numbers looked good. It is hard to see if a pattern is developing after just one game, but the mix looked about right. Lots of runs this time, but Stanford was giving up big yards on the ground and it helped establish some nice play-action passing in the second half.

Looking at the official NCAA statistics, the Bruin offense ranks 1st in the PAC-10 and 4th in the country. I'm sure those numbers will come down a bit as we take on stiffer competition than Stanford, but not a bad start for this squad! Those numbers were bolstered by Kalil Bell's career best 198 yards.

Probably the best numbers from the game up in Palo Alto was the red zone scoring. After that first misfire the Bruin were a perfect 4 touchdowns on 4 attempts. Considering how much UCLA struggled last season in red zone efficiency, Saturday's match up was a big step in the right direction.

On the defensive side of the ball, it was Kyle Bosworth's day. The backup defensive end had two sacks to lead the team. The Bruins had four sacks in whole with Trey Brown and Tom Blake adding to the total. It was good to see the linebackers leading in the tackling column with Reggie Carter toping the list at 10 stops. When your safeties are you leading tacklers you know your opponents are getting behind your guys. Carter, Whittington and Taylor were the top three tacklers this week.