UCLA, Virginia Tech to meet for the first time in Sun Bowl
By Andrew Erickson
Dec. 9, 2013 2:49 a.m.
With the 2013 Sun Bowl just three weeks away, one clear similarity between the two teams playing in it has been brought to the forefront: UCLA and Virginia Tech hardly know a thing about each other.
UCLA, the No. 4 team in the Pac-12, was announced Sunday as the conference’s representative in the Sun Bowl, which takes place in El Paso, Texas, on New Year’s Eve. The Bruins will take on the Hokies, the No. 4 team from the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The two schools’ football teams have never faced one another, and the Bruins’ most recent experience with the ACC came seven years ago in the form of a loss to Florida State in the 2006 Emerald Bowl.
“In terms of their team this year, I’m not really familiar with it at all,” said coach Jim Mora. “They’re kind of out of our orbit although right now we just entered the same orbit. That’s going to change very quickly.”
One of Mora’s few familiarities with UCLA’s upcoming opponent is its coach, Frank Beamer. The coach of the Hokies since 1987, Beamer is one of the longest tenured coaches in college football and someone who Mora, a former NFL coach, has shared a number of players with, including quarterbacks Jim Druckenmiller and Michael Vick as well as defensive backs DeAngelo Hall and Jimmy Williams.
“They have one of the finest coaches in this game, coach Beamer, who is someone I’ve looked up to for a long, long time and have a tremendous amount of respect for,” Mora said. “It’s a great program with tremendous tradition led by, in my opinion, one of the legends of the game.”
Beamer said he likewise knows very few specifics regarding the 2013 Bruins, a reality that calls for plenty of scouting on the part of his coaching staff in the coming weeks. He did, however, mention his excitement at the prospect of playing a ranked team.
Though mutual strangers, the Bruins and Hokies are more similar than they might think. Both, for example, missed out on their respective conference title games by a single game. The No. 19 Bruins (9-3, 6-3 Pac-12) had their title hopes dashed by Arizona State two Saturdays ago and the Hokies were served their defining loss in a 13-10 battle with Duke on Oct. 26.
“We didn’t quite get there, but our kids played hard (and) we had a lot of things go against this team injury-wise and so forth,” Beamer said. “But, in the big picture, I think we did well and finished up well and finished up in a great bowl against a super opponent.”
The Hokies (8-4, 5-3 ACC) have also had to mix and match at the running back position because of the dismissal of Michael Holmes in July, as well as a nagging ankle injury to J.C. Coleman that caused the sophomore to miss four games earlier in the season. To make matters worse, leading rusher Trey Edmunds broke his leg in Virginia Tech’s most recent win over Virginia, rendering him unable to play for the remainder of the season.
In the absence of a consistent run game, more pressure fell on the shoulders of quarterback Logan Thomas, a feeling redshirt sophomore quarterback Brett Hundley of UCLA knew all too well this season.
The Hokies also benefited from having the eighth-best scoring defense in the nation. The Bruins finished a more modest 39th, but are still champing at the bit for one final go-round as a unit.
“I don’t think it matters,” senior outside linebacker Anthony Barr said Saturday of UCLA’s then-possible opponent. “I just think we’re looking forward to the opportunity of being together again and playing together one more time as a team.”
