Written by Alex Goff    Saturday, 09 March 2013 20:15    PDF Print Write e-mail
Mild Shocker as UCLA Beats Utah
Colleges - Men's DI College


UCLA pulled off something of a shock result in the PAC Rugby Conference Saturday with a 50-38 defeat of 2-0 Utah.

The offensive outburst may have been a bit surprising to most, but UCLA Head Coach Scott Stewart said his players just executed.

"When we had the ball the players were very direct and ran with purpose and created space and took advantage," said Stewart. "Utah is a powerful team and they have a lot of good athletes. We knew we had to make them work hard to score on us."

And Utah did score. In most games, scoring 38 points will leave you smiling at the end of full time, but not this time. And UCLA's defense helped make their 50 points happen.

"Our guys came up very quickly, and did well to take away space and time," said Stewart. "Our forwards really did a good job of tackling and playing physical against a bigger team. All the guys stuck to the game plan and continued to work hard and made as many tackles as they possibly could."

UCLA improves to 2-1, tied with Utah at 2-1. Leading the conference is Cal, which slammed Oregon State 62-7 Saturday to improve to 4-0.

Wing Andrew Battaglia and prop Lyall Davenport both scored two tries for the Bears, who led 21-0 at halftime and 26-7 with 20 to go - a relatively close game for teams playing Cal these days.

The unofficial conference standings are as follows:

PAC W L T Pf Pa Pd BT BL Pts
Cal 4 0 0 321 43 278 4 0 20
Utah 2 1 0 117 71 46 3 0 11
UCLA 2 1 0 107 125 -18 3 0 11
Oregon State 0 2 0 19 97 -78 0 0 0
Arizona 0 2 0 24 123 -99 0 0 0
Arizona State 0 2 0 11 140 -129 0 0 0