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“There’s a quote that I love, I’m not sure who said it, but fortune favors the bold, so you got to be aggressive to win games like that,” Eck said. “We weren’t going to be scared. We don’t play these games to try to keep it close. We come to win these games.”
Nico Iamaleava was 22-of-34 passing for 217 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and the Bruins (0-3) were sloppy on both sides of the ball, exacerbated by 13 penalties for 116 yards.
“It’s pretty low right now,” UCLA coach and former star running back DeShaun Foster said about the state of the program. “I’ve been around this program for a long time, and it’s just unfortunate what’s going on at this moment. Just not executing.”
After attempting trick-play passes on the first two snaps, the Lobos turned to the ground game and immediately found success, leading to Humphrey’s 1-yard touchdown run late in the first quarter.
“I thought we may have to wear them down as the game went on, but we ran it well early, so credit to the O-line,” Eck said.
Layne lobbed a fourth-down toss to tight end Simon Mapa in the corner of the end zone for an 8-yard score to make it 14-0 before the Bruins finally got on track with Iamaleava’s 12-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Titus Mokiao-Atimalala.
UCLA pulled within 14-10 on Mateen Bhaghani‘s 51-yard field goal in the third quarter after recovering a muffed punt, but New Mexico took charge for good with a punishing 13-play, 75-yard drive capped by Bankston’s 2-yard touchdown run.
“I ain’t gonna lie — me personally, I thought it was gonna be a closer game,” Bankston said. “But once we got to halftime, and we realized that we had a lot of mistakes and we still had the lead, it was like, let’s go ahead and, like, try to pull away from these guys.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
