In his first season as the head coach of UCLA football, Jim Mora appeared to be taking the Bruins in a new direction. A year after Rick Neuheisel’s last Bruin team’s "over the wall" mentality lead to a series of embarrassments culminating in a 50-0 loss to USC in the Coliseum that finally got Dan Guerrero to issue the pink slip, Mora’s Bruins whipped Lane Kiffin’s team 38-28 in the Rose Bowl, with an exclamation point delivered by linebacker Anthony Barr.
The Bruins had bested the Trojans for the first time in five years and it wasn’t an ugly upset like 13-9 either, but a full-scale, all phases of the game, sound defeat.