UCLA Sports: ESPN College GameDay Coming To Westwood

LOS ANGELES, CA —ESPN announced Sunday that its popular College GameDay football pregame show would be coming to town for the Oregon at UCLA game this weekend.

The Bruins (5-3, 3-1 in the Pac-12) will host the No. 10 Ducks (5-1, 2-1) at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at the Rose Bowl. Though the game will be in Pasadena, GameDay will be filmed live in Westwood, UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond confirmed to the UCLA pep squad, which was captured on social media.

The Bruins are coming off a 24-17 win at Washington Saturday in Seattle. Oregon defeated Cal by the same score a day earlier.

This will be the first time the show has ever visited UCLA's campus. The program was in town for the Oct. 17, 1998 Oregon at UCLA game, but the taping of the show was done live at the Rose Bowl, according to SI.com.

That year, the No. 2 ranked Bruins, led by quarterback Cade McNown, defeated the Ducks 41-38 in overtime.

The GameDay program features on-air personalities Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, David Pollack and Lee Corso, and welcomes special guests affiliated with the local school. The hosts normally appear in a front of a raucous crowd, most of them students and many of them holding homemade signs.

UCLA said on social media that it would offer more details about the location of the show and how students can appear in the crowd.

Men's Basketball

On Monday, the UCLA's men's basketball team was ranked No. 2 in the nation in the AP Preseason Top 25. Gonzaga, the team that beat UCLA on an improbable half-court buzzer-beater in last year's national semifinal, is ranked No. 1.

The Zags received 55 of 63 first-place votes in the preseason poll, which is voted on by a group of sportswriters and broadcasters from across the country. UCLA received eight first-place votes. Kansas, Villanova and Texas round out the top five.

The Bruins are starting with a top-10 preseason ranking for the first time since 2009. UCLA was last in the top 10 during the 2016-17 season.

However, Bruins second-year head coach Mick Cronin said rankings do not determine how a team will do during the season. After all, his team entered last season's tournament as a No. 11 seed, but reached the Final Four.

"If we taught anybody anything last year, your seed or ranking does not matter come tournament time," Cronin said last month.

The Bruins are expected to be led by forward Johnny Juzang, who averaged 16.0 points per game last season, junior guard/forward Jaime Jaquez Jr., who averaged 12.3 points per game, and junior point guard Tyger Campbell, who averaged 10.4 points and 5.1 assists per game.