An Indiana-like UCLA team has Dan Lanning’s attention 

Dan Lanning understood the questions and apologized for his inability to address them.

Yes, people are still talking about the USC game — Lanning himself had been on a two-day national media blitz. But by Wednesday’s meeting with local media on the bye week, the coach had come to a realization that it was probably best to move on.

Quarterback Dante Moore is “healthy and doing well,” the coach said, but otherwise he was “done talking about this game.”

With good reason, it seems.

“We’re about to play a UCLA team that reminds me a lot of Indiana from last year,” Lanning told reporters.

Gulp.

It’s not that Oregon fans should feel any less happy about the last four days, a period when the Ducks’ reemergence as a contender on the field was outdone only by the online victory lap that came next.

The Ducks jumped from 20th to 15th in the AP poll, and that game in November against No. 5 Ohio State can get a circle around it on the calendar.

Just not on the calendars inside the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex.

Because Lanning doesn’t use “Indiana” lightly.

If it wasn’t for Indiana, Oregon might have a national championship. If it wasn’t for Indiana, Lanning, not Curt Cignetti, might be the new “it coach” in college football.

But if it wasn’t for Indiana, maybe the Ducks would have taken next week’s opponent a little too lightly.

It’s not like UCLA has done much recently to warrant a scare. The Ducks have won five straight against the Bruins and nine of the last 10 meetings.

Think the Ducks had a problem with going through coaches? Including interims, six men have worn the headset on the sideline for the Bruins over the last decade.

But it’s their latest, Bob Chesney, who took over for the fired DeShaun Foster and interim Tim Skipper, who has caught Lanning’s — and college football’s — eye.

Chesney came to UCLA from James Madison, where he went 21-6 in two seasons — including last year’s run to the playoffs, where the Dukes fell to the Ducks in the first round.

“They have a lot of players that came with them,” Lanning said. “Why I draw some comparisons to Indiana: a lot of guys that traveled with their coach to the next stop, they’re an extremely well coached team, you got two coordinators that were with him before so they’ve been together for a while. They have a lot of continuity from that standpoint.”

And:

“They’re running the ball as well as anybody in college football.”

That’s no exaggeration.

West Virginia is the only Power Four school averaging more than UCLA’s 281.5 rushing yards per game, and no team in the country averages more yards per carry than the Bruins’ 6.95 or has scored more touchdowns than UCLA’s 18 on the ground.

And while the Ducks showed defensive improvement against USC, they’re still susceptible to the big play. Only five teams in the Big Ten have allowed more plays of 10 yards or more than the 46 the Ducks have, and only two teams have given up more plays of 20 or more yards.

“We still gave up way too many explosive plays for us to be the team that we want to be,” Lanning said. “And (USC has) some really good schemes that we just faced. They were able to create explosives … that we didn’t have answers to, that we had to have better answers. I think we did a good job choking out the runs on the tackles, but then there were some explosive runs on the perimeter that we got to do a better job at and adjust to that better.”

And on offense?

Lanning said he’d still like to see the team improve on first and second downs. The Ducks are facing too many third-and-long situations, he said, and efficiency needs to increase.

Lanning didn’t indicate how long Moore might be out. But if it’s Dylan Raiola against the Bruins next week, the Ducks at least know what they can expect.

“Just like everybody else in this team, he’s got an improvement plan,” Lanning said. “He’s got areas that he can grow and get better, but he’s proven he can play winning football for us and has a skill set that’ll be advantageous for us to have.”