By Austin Ota Ryan Oppenheimer and Jakob Salao

Written Story by Jakob Salao

Saturday was one of the most memorable days for Oregon football fans in recent years. Starting early in the twilight hours of the morning, ESPN Gameday had Ducks fans lined up around the memorial quad on the University of Oregon’s campus. Then, hours later, the #10 ranked Oregon Ducks would take on the #9 ranked UCLA Bruins, where the Ducks would take home the victory 45-30. 

Oregon opened the scoring on the first drive of the game with a field goal and never looked back. UCLA would be able to tie, but the Bruins could never get a lead on the Ducks. After Oregon would score, UCLA would match right back, leaving the game knotted up. In the second quarter, at about the 11 minute mark, Oregon would recover an onside kick, score a TD, and never look back for the rest of the game, continuing to outscore the Bruins until the very end. If you don’t count the final drive where QB Bo Nix was purposefully trying to run out the clock, Oregon only failed to score on one of their eight drives. Six of those eight drives were TDs. 

The Bruins, statistically speaking, did not have a bad game. QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson threw for 262 yards with 2 TDs and 1 interception. He also added 41 yards on the ground, second only to RB Zach Charbonnet who had 152 rushing yards, 28 receiving yards, and 1 rushing TD. The UCLA WRs with the reception TDs were Jake Bobo, who had 101 yards, and Keegan Jones with 49 yards. 

The stars for the Ducks shined against UCLA, led by QB Bo Nix who threw 283 yards for 5 TDs on near perfect throwing, going 22/28 on the day. RB Bucky Irving rushed for 108 yards and a TD and WR Troy Franklin set a new career-high record of 2 TDs and nearly broke his record of receiving yards at 132 (his career-high is 137). 

After the win, Oregon moves on to be 6-1 overall, 4-0 in the Pac-12. As the Ducks continue to aim for the Pac-12 championship, and potentially a national playoff spot after a likely guaranteed boost to their standing with this win, Oregon will begin a two game road series for their next two games. Next Saturday, the playoff-hopefuls are headed down to California to take on Cal.

Postgame Audio

Defensive Story by Austin Ota

Head Coach Dan Lanning

Linebacker Noah Sewell

Tight End Cam McCormick

Wide Receiver Troy Franklin