UCLA football keeps getting close, but close doesn’t cut it for Coach Jim Mora

During his second season at UCLA, after a dispiriting loss to Oregon, Coach Jim Mora issued a manifesto.

“We’re so close, but it doesn’t matter,” Mora said in his postgame news conference, growing animated. “We’re not after being close. Heck with being close. Losers can be close. We want to get it. We want to win those games. The coulda, the woulda, the shoulda, all that crap, we don’t want that. I’m tired of that.

“It’s time for UCLA to turn the friggin’ page,” he said as he brought his hand down hard on the table, “and be something different. And win those games. That’s what it’s time to be.”

Mora’s hard-charging coaching style is part of the reason he has found success in his first four seasons at UCLA. But his own metrics are demanding.

Saturday’s Foster Farms Bowl against Nebraska, which ended too late for this edition, closes Mora’s first full recruiting cycle as coach. On Saturday evening, the first class recruited by Mora played its final game with the Bruins. The team now is shaped fully in Mora’s image.

That makes it an appropriate time to examine: how far has UCLA come in Mora’s four seasons? And where has it fallen short?

By objective measures, Mora has been an improvement on the two previous coaches, Karl Dorrell and Rick Neuheisel. His best accomplishment is, simply, the number of wins his teams have accumulated.

Mora on Saturday was bidding for his 38th, which would be a UCLA record in a four-season span. His .711 winning percentage is the highest for any UCLA coach other than Dick Vermeil (15-5-3 in 1974 and ‘75) and Red Sanders (66-19-1 from 1947-57).

Since Mora took over, no Pac-12 South team has as many wins as UCLA.

“We’ve won a lot of games,” Mora said this week.

Mora’s first seasons were forged by his fiery, insurgent attitude. Immediately, he recruited a top-15 class. He ended the “over-the-wall” tradition, in which seniors skipped a bowl practice. He reached the Pac-12 championship game in his first season, and beat USC his first three tries, before a loss this season.

“We kind of broke a lot of past traditions,” senior receiver Jordan Payton said, recalling Mora’s first season. “We came in with a whole new mind-set, and that was just to work and win.”

Off the field, Mora was the team’s emotional center after the death of receiver Nick Pasquale in 2013.

During Mora’s tenure, UCLA broke ground on a $65-million football facility, to which Mora contributed personally.

UCLA has now become a top destination for recruits. Mora’s recruiting classes have consistently been among the best in the conference.

But some fans have grumbled that Mora should have accomplished more with the talent he has assembled. Is that true?

One way to test this is to compare UCLA’s average recruiting rankings, freshman class through senior, to the season’s final computer rankings. If UCLA were performing at or near its potential, its recruiting ranking would be equal or close to its computer ranking.

A closer look shows that Mora’s UCLA teams don’t stray too far from their talent level:

•2012: Recruiting ranking: 15. Final Sagarin Rating: 32.

•2013: Recruiting: 15. Sagarin: 8.

•2014: Recruiting: 14. Sagarin: 19.

•2015: Recruiting: 12. Sagarin: 26.

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UCLA under-performed in Mora’s first year, over-performed in his second, and mostly met expectations in his third. The fourth has been a slight disappointment, but the Bruins have suffered an unusual number of injuries.

But rankings paint only a partial portrait. In one key area, Mora has, to this point, failed: UCLA has yet to win the Pac-12 championship.

In that regard, UCLA has actually regressed. In Mora’s first season, UCLA finished first in the South division, before losing to Stanford in the title game. The next two seasons, it finished second. This season, it was third.

Against Oregon and Stanford, the only two teams to win a Pac-12 championship in the last four seasons, Mora’s UCLA teams are 0-7.

If UCLA had had its way, its first-ever trip to Levi’s Stadium would’ve come on Dec. 5, for the Pac-12 championship game, not on Saturday for the Foster Farms Bowl. But the Bruins’ loss to USC in the regular-season finale sent the Trojans instead.

“I wish we could’ve played in Santa Clara two weeks ago,” defensive lineman Takkarist McKinley said last week.

In other words, UCLA was close, something that, because of Mora, it is no longer interested in.

zach.helfand@latimes.com

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