Thompson-Robinson Leads UCLA Past Stanford, 35-24
The Bruin defense held the Cardinal to 21 yards rushing in the first half and 74 total.
Dorian Thompson-Robinson ran for two touchdowns and threw for two more as the Bruins defeated Stanford this afternoon, 35-24.
UCLA got on the board on their first possession, thanks to a big 59-yard punt return by Kyle Philips that gave the Bruins the ball on the Stanford 13. Five plays later, Thompson-Robinson scored his first touchdown of the game when he ran the ball in on a 3rd down and goal play after Zach Charbonnet couldn’t get in on four tries.
Charbonnet wrapped up a 16-play, 88-yard drive with a 5-yard touchdown run with 15 seconds left in the first quarter to give the Bruins a 14-0 lead. On the drive, the Bruins ran the ball 13 times and gave it to Charbonnet nine times including the scoring run.
Stanford finally got on the board with 4:36 to go in the first half when Tanner McKee threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to Brycen Tremayne to cut UCLA’s lead in half.
With 1:40 to go, the Bruins got the ball back on their own 45-yard line. DTR ran for seven yards and then completed four consecutive passes to Charbonnet to move the ball down to the Stanford 13. An 11-yard pass to Greg Dulcich gave UCLA aa first down with a timeout left and 26 seconds to go, but the Bruins wasted no time scoring. DTR faked a handoff to Charbonnet and ran wide for the Bruins’ third touchdown of the game.
While Thompson-Robinson directed the offense to three first half touchdowns, the unsung hero of the first half was the Bruin defense. Much to the delight of Bruin fans from Palo Alto to Westwood, UCLA was aggressive and downright stingy when Stanford had the ball, only allowing 21 yards rushing in the first half. Indeed, it was the defense UCLA showed in the first two weeks of the season which was back again today.
In the second half, the Cardinal managed to score twice to tie the game, 21-21, early in the fourth quarter. But, in the final thirteen minutes, UCLA’s high-powered offense bounced back while the Bruin defense kept the Cardinal from getting into the end zone again.
With the way this team played today, especially on defense, it would have been awful if there was a repeat of last week when UCLA came back only to lose in the last minute.
But, today was not last week.
In fact, after McKee hit Bryce Farrell for a 46-yard touchdown to tie the game, a noticeably injured DTR came right back to thread the needle between two Stanford DBs, finding Philips on a seam route for a 75-yard touchdown pass.
On the ensuing drive, the defense held the Cardinal to a 48-yard field goal that made it 28-24.
Then, for good measure, Thompson-Robinson led the Bruins on one more drive. Even after DTR left the game after taking another tough hit following a short run, he still came back out to throw another touchdown pass to Philips, this time for five yards.
That iced the game as Stanford needed two scores with 2:30 to go, but these Bruins weren’t going to give up even another point as UCLA defeated the Cardinal, 35-24.
Go Bruins!!!
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Nice job on the write up Joe, the Bruins sound a lot better when you tell this games story. I guess I am so used to seeing our Bruins shoot them selfs in the foot and then not be able to recover that I was on pins and needles the whole game waiting for disaster to strike.
I know the cards were down a number of players today but its still nice to be 3-1.