Try, Try Again

They have become the starting-over linebackers.

Michael Wiley, in the opening lineup for Game 1 and in the repair shop ever since, returned to practice Monday to find his job long gone and his season not far behind. Maybe even his UCLA career.

Ramogi Huma, able to last until Week 3 as the starter before the injuries piled up, made it back last Saturday against Stanford, but not all the way back. About 10 plays in a reserve role, no tackles. Tons of frustration.

Someone forgot to invite them to the party. The Bruins are 7-0 and ranked No. 3 in the nation--and two players who were projected to have major roles are instead the guys standing at the door and taking tickets.

They have each other--”We’ve talked about it plenty of times,” Wiley says--but mostly they have questions.

What happened to the season? That’s a common one.

Would it be better just to retire? Wiley has dibs on that one.

What’s the deal with pregame warmups? Both.

Will it ever heal? Huma.

Wiley was No. 1 at left outside linebacker Sept. 12 against Texas, and Huma was directly next to him on the inside. An entire side was gone within about a month, at least until Santi Hall and Ryan Nece showed their development, and then an entire side was discovered. So well have Hall and Nece played that neither of the originals might start again this season.

Or beyond? Wiley is a junior but is also on course to graduate in June with a psychology degree, so graduate school is more than a means to a master’s in education. He wants that--and he needs that to play football again next season, enrollment a requirement for a fifth year and a fourth season of eligibility.

He took one of the graduate school tests Monday, the same day he rejoined the Bruins for the first time since mid-September, after recording three tackles against Texas. A sprained lower back kept him out of the second game, at Houston. He made it back for the next week, against Washington State. To pregame warmups, at least.

Fifteen minutes before kickoff at the Rose Bowl, Wiley sprained his right ankle while doing a drill, so severely that he heard a pop. There went that game. And the next one. And the next month. Five contests in all were lost, before he seemed ready to resurface against Stanford. At that point, strep throat and a 103-degree temperature knocked him out.

“So I look up and I see my fourth year and it’s more than halfway gone,” he said. “We’ve got four games left in the season and a bowl game too. I’ll just have to make the best of what’s left.

“Over all the pain, the frustration I’ve been going through, that’s the worst part. I was more frustrated than hurt. It seemed like every time I tried to come back, something else happened. It just really got to me mentally. I didn’t know I was going to be able to bounce back, but with the Lord’s help I did it.

“I was just trying to think, ‘Was it worth playing anymore?’ I want to have my health after football. My back was a little messed up at first, and time healed that. I was thinking, ‘Was I going to hurt myself in the long run?’ Just tossing a lot of things around in my mind. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do.”

Wiley said retirement “might have passed through my mind” upon realizing the severity of the ankle injury, but “I’m not a quitter.” So he will try again for the comeback Saturday at Oregon State, a reserve linebacker because of the commendable play of redshirt freshman Hall, but at least feeling like a Bruin again.

Huma had those 10 plays against Stanford, but his frustration after the game was apparent as the equipment was shoved into the big blue duffel bag.

He had eight tackles against Texas, a team high. He had three at Houston, then hobbled through the next two games, once after being forced off the field during pregame warmups at Arizona. Oregon and California, those two were total misses.

“It’s been real torture,” Huma said of his sprained hip. “When I don’t aggravate it, when I don’t re-injure it, it feels 100%. But it’s like if I would play a whole game, I would hurt it seven or eight times. They’d have to be escorting me off the field all the time.”

Into the void stepped another redshirt freshman, Nece, all the way to second on the team in tackles. Huma, meanwhile, has been left to wonder.

“I don’t know if it’s going to heal in time to salvage anything,” he said of the season.

Saturday in Corvallis also comes to him as a new opportunity, same as Wiley (“Your guess is as good as mine,” Coach Bob Toledo said when asked if he expected to have Wiley back.) Both might get to feel like contributors again, and not to feel other things too much.

They’re listed as probable. But check back closer to kickoff.

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“Over all the pain, the frustration I’ve been going through, that’s the worst part. I was more frustrated than hurt. It seemed like every time I tried to come back, something else happened. It just really got to me mentally.” BRUIN LINEBACKER MICHAEL WILEY