First year UCLA head coach DeShaun Foster, who previously coached the team’s running backs, will have a new role on the sideline on Saturday when Bruins play Hawaii.
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Just like before his first high school game and his first college game as a running back, Foster acknowledged he expected some jitters before his first game as coach.
“I’m sure I’ll have them Friday night, the night before, or it might even happen as I’m running out” before kickoff, Foster said. “But it’s gonna happen.”
The difference between the nerves he experienced then and now, Foster said, is that he could more directly control the outcome as a player than as a coach. Asked whom he would model his pregame speech after, Foster jokingly referenced the coach portrayed by Al Pacino in “Any Given Sunday.”
“Do your job!” Foster imitated before turning serious. “Mostly it’s gonna come from the heart. That’s me. You know, I gotta speak how I feel and just come and be genuine.”
Foster isn’t the only coach finding his bearings on a staff with six new assistants and two holdovers, Ikaika Malloe and Jerry Neuheisel, moving into different positions.
There will be as much to assess on the sideline as on the field. Can Eric Bieniemy’s offense be mastered quickly by players who acknowledged struggling to learn the names of plays? Can Malloe’s defense be anywhere near as good as predecessor D’Anton Lynn’s? Can Juan Castillo get the offensive line to adequately protect quarterback Ethan Garbers?
“We have high expectations for what we want to get done,” said Malloe, who will be running a defense for the first time since he was Washington’s co-defensive coordinator during the 2020 and 2021 seasons. “We won’t know until the pads come on Saturday” whether they’re successful.
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