Monday’s sound bites from UCLA practice

It has been a couple days since UCLA lost to Utah, but judging from some of the emails I got this morning, fans are still pretty salty over the Bruins’ first loss of the season.

This team has always had issues, but they’ve been masked behind victories. The offensive line and secondary struggling really isn’t anything new, but they didn’t matter as much because the team was undefeated. Now, after a bad loss at home, all of that stuff is coming to the forefront.

I addressed some of that in the blog posts from yesterday, specifically writing about the defense having gap issues and the wide receivers needing to have another big game against Oregon this weekend. Also snuck in a story on Marcus Rios, who almost died last summer and is now getting a lot of snaps at nickel corner.

And, of course, some quotes for your Tuesday morning.

Redshirt junior quarterback Brett Hundley

On the mistakes against Utah: “The thing we can take out of this game is that we’re such a great team when we stay positive with what we do, when we don’t have negative plays and stuff like that.�

On last year’s loss to Oregon: “It was just a very physical game, and one that got away from us at the end. We played a great first half, and in the second half, we came out and let it slip away from us.�

On comparisons to Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota: “We have similar traits. He’s a fast quarterback, he’s very efficient in his offense, and he can throw the ball around and run when he needs to.�

Junior wide receiver Jordan Payton

On how tough the Pac-12 Conference is this season: “We were literally just talking about it in the locker room, how every single week is such a huge game, and every single team is so good that you have to come prepared each week. This week, you know, the stakes are high, but we’re going to be ready for it.�

For more Bruin observations, follow Everett Cook on Twitter @everettcook