UCLA Football: Spring Practice Begins April 3

This past February new UCLA football coach Jim Mora, along with his staff, showed that he can recruit, getting a class that was ranked as high as 11th in the country.

Now the time has come for Mora to show what he and his staff can do with players – at least as far as the spring is concerned, as the Bruins will begin preparing for the 2012 campaign with the start of spring practices at Spaulding Field on the UCLA campus on April 3.

The Bruins will practice every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday during the month of April, concluding with the annual Spring Game at the Rose Bowl on Cinco De Mayo, Saturday, May 5, at 5:00 p.m. All practices, including the Spring Game, are open to the public.

The three biggest priorities that UCLA will face in Mora’s first season in Westwood will be:

1.  Installing a new offense, as the gimmicky “pistol” offense that was installed by Rick Neuheisel in 2010 will be mercifully dumped. It was a running-based scheme that may have worked with Nevada, where Neuheisel got the offense from, but didn’t really work with the elite teams of the Pac-12.

2.  Figuring out who the quarterback will be in the fall, as the three main candidates are:

a.  Kevin Prince, the incumbent starter who is a gutsy player and has taken a beating behind sub-par offensive lines throughout his time as a Bruin, and who put up decent numbers – for him – in 2011 as his touchdown passes outnumbered his interceptions, 12 to 8, but whose arm strength is just too weak for him to be a long-term winner.

b.  Richard Brehaut, who started for much of the 2010 season and half of 2011 until he broke his leg against Washington State. As the pistol offense is being done away with, he will have a better chance of playing then Prince due to his better arm strength and ability to throw the ball down field. His playing on UCLA’s baseball team, however, raises questions as to exactly how committed he is to truly establish himself as the Bruins’ signal caller.

c.  Brett Hundley. The time has come for this former four-star recruit (five-star according to some sources) from Arizona, whom many UCLA fans have deemed as the “savior” after redshirting in 2011, to show what he’s got as Mora needs to give him every chance to win the job. If Hundley is to be the man behind center, April will be the most important month for him in his career as he needs to show the new Bruin coach that he can do the job.

The third and most important priority for Mora this spring will be…

3.  Commencing with establishing a new culture in the football program.

Mora has said that things will be different, in that the atmosphere will be a lot more serious as things like that “Over the Wall” tradition, where players ditch practice during preparations for a bowl game, will be gone, and players will be held more accountable than ever in their commitment to football and bringing UCLA back to relevance.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some players transfer in the coming months, as some of them will realize that they won’t fit in with Mora’s culture.

One thing is for certain: this April will be a very important one in Westwood as the new coaching regime gets their feet wet and sees what they have to work with.