UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava made his highly anticipated debut with the Bruins over the weekend after a tumultuous exit from Tennessee back in the spring. Iamaleava struggled during his team’s 43-10 loss to Utah, completing just 11 of his 22 attempts for 136 yards with one touchdown and an interception.
Iamaleava and the Bruins will look to bounce back on Saturday when UCLA travels to face UNLV on CBS Sports Network. UNLV, in its first season under coach Dan Mullen, is off to a 2-0 start with wins over Idaho State and Sam Houston. Mullen’s team is full of transfers and one player on the new-look Rebels, defensive back Aamaris Brown, wasn’t too impressed with what he saw from Iamaleava, the No. 1 player in the 247Sports transfer portal rankings.
“Honestly, nothing really sticks out to me about him [on tape],” Brown said Monday. “You know in the past there’s been talk about ‘five-star this, five-star that.’ I have been around plenty of five-star and four-star [players], it don’t scare me. I have played competition higher than them, including Alabama and all that. … Going against a guy like Nico, there’s no surprise, no excitement or nothing like that.”
Nico Iamaleava gets a reality check in Utah’s rout of UCLA: Tennessee transfer’s debut falls flat
Cameron Salerno
Brown, who has an interception in both of UNLV’s games, has plenty of experience facing off against a wide variety of signal callers. He began his career at Kansas State in 2020 and spent two seasons with the program before transferring to USF for another two years.
UNLV lost last season’s Mountain West title game to Boise State, which earned the No. 3 seed in the inaugural 12-team playoff, and then saw coach Barry Odom leave for Purdue. With a revamped roster under Mullen, UNLV received some preseason buzz as a potential Mountain West contender once again. The Rebels looked shaky to start, barely pulling out a 38-31 win over Idaho State in Week 0. They looked better last week, going on the road and taking care of Sam Houston, 38-21.
Unlike Brown, Mullen believes his team is in for a challenge with Iamaleava and the Bruins visiting.
“Watching the film, you see the talent that he has,” Mullen said. “The performance in the end, statistically in the end, probably wasn’t the game he wanted to play, but you can certainly see his talent on film. … I think [Nico] is going to come out fired up and ready to put on a show and rebound from his performance. He is an extremely talented player.”
This weekend will mark just the third all-time meeting between the programs, with UCLA winning the previous two matchups.
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