By Howard Tsumura
Varsity Letters
VANCOUVER — No, the UBC Thunderbirds did not steal fire from the football gods.
Yet to give credit where it is due, they did maybe the next best thing… they seem to have plucked 18-year-old running back Marvyn Larozar from under the noses of every college and university football program that can claim to have a waking pulse.
And while it’s folly to suggest that the Point Grey braintrust knew precisely what they had when they landed the pure freshman running back from Ottawa this past offseason, Larozar’s second straight 200-yard-plus rushing performance, one which led UBC (2-1) to a 25-20 upset of the visiting, No. 4-ranked Regina Rams (2-1) before an overflow homecoming game crowd of 8,080 fans Friday night at Thunderbird Stadium, silenced any naysayers who might have thought the 6-foot-3, 205-pounder’s 285-yard, four-TD performance the week previous in a lopsided victory over winless Alberta was the work of some one-hit wonder.
But more than that, in this most recent eight-day span, from one Friday night to the next in which a fully-unveiled Larozar has blossomed to the tune of 43 combined carries for 493 yards and six touchdowns in its wins over both the Golden Bears and Rams, you sense an unspoken realization around the program profound enough to suggest that their figurative goalposts have been moved… this time in the Thunderbirds’ favour.
Larozar’s Friday performance against the nation’s No. 2-ranked overall defence, one which included a first-quarter touchdown run in which he went up the gut, subsequently disappeared in a mass of UBC and Regina players, then somehow re-emerged to score on a 70-yard run, has served as a fulcrum with the potential to leverage the ‘Birds towards membership in that next level of national title conversation.
The overall cause-and-effect of it all has been dizzying enough that a once run-hungry team is coming to grips with the reality that it might just now have the very best running game in the country.
Thus on a night in which his unranked team knocked off the conference’s last of the unbeaten, UBC’s veteran head coach Blake Nill was not simply acting the part of contrarian in his post-game media scrum, but instead genuinely concerned that his team’s massive potential not be frittered away by the misconceived notion that they had somehow already arrived after an eight-day reinvention.
Indeed, in the tradition of the Canada West’s unforgiving nature, Friday’s was one of those contests in which the final result was determined on the final play of the game.
On what wound up being its penultimate snap, Regina quarterback Noah Pelletier’s potential game-winning pass to the end zone was intercepted and returned 110 yards by UBC defensive back Niko Kanagawa, but ultimately waved off after the two teams incurred the wrath of five penalty flags, all falling at various parts of the field.
When the dust had settled, Regina was given one more chance to win the game from its own 41-yard line, but Pelletier’s pass went incomplete amongst a mass of players from both teams gathered in the end zone.
“NOT IN THE RIGHT MINDSET YET…”
The first big play of Friday’s game, by the home team, was a 54-yard run by Marvyn Larozar down to the Regina five-yard line.
To hear the collective roar of the capacity crowd rise from a soft buzz to a symphonic roar within the few strides Larozar needed to break free was symbolic of the instant love affair No. 1 has built with the fan base in the span of a week.
And Nill is right there with the blue-and-gold’s faithful.
“That kid’s the real deal,” he said after Larozar carried 21 times for 208 yards and two scores.
Heading into this week, Larozar leads the nation in rushing yards (504) and rushing yards-per-game (168.0), is tied for first in rushing touchdowns (six) and is second in yards-per-carry (10.5), all after he debuted in the team’s season-opening loss to Calgary with five carries for 11 yards.
And of course there have been a myriad of other early success stories on both sides of the ball, the bulk of which are bound to be overshadowed when any player on any team goes out and does what Larozar has.
From the Brian Branch-like tackling and intensity of safety Cesare Rednour-Bruckman to the old-school heart and versatility in the trenches of tight-end/fullback/third-down go-to-guy Zach Patfield, to the depth and versatility of the ‘Birds offensive line rotation, there is plenty to get excited about.
And it’s a combination of all of that potential along with a myriad of UBC penalties and miscues, and the fact that the ‘Birds not only have one more game remaining with Regina, but two more with its kryptonic foes, the Saskatchewan Huskies, over their final five games of the regular season, that had Nill sounding as cautionary and muted as he has at any time over his previous 11 UBC campaigns.
“That’s as frustrating a win as I have had in my career, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “We’re just not in the right mindset yet. If we play that game 10 times, you win five, you lose five. Regina’s a very good team, but I’m just saying, if we capitalized on our opportunities, the game’s a lot more… It’d be a lot different, right?”
A STRAIGHT-SHOOTER TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
It’s hard to argue with Nill.
Larozar had set up the team at the Rams’ five-yard line off of his opening 54-yard run, yet the Birds came away pointless after failing to capitalize on third-and-goal at the three.
And for the second quarter and much of the third, the UBC offence seemed to hit a funk it couldn’t climb out of until quarterback Drew Viotto mounted a game-turning drive, taking his team 69 yards with back-to-back chain-moving completions, capped by a 23-yard touchdown strike to rookie tight end Santiago Llarena, who in the infant moments of his university career seems to have picked up right where he left off following a dominant career with Abbotsford’s W.J. Mouat Hawks.
The drive started when Patfield was rewarded for his precise route-running, turning a well-time in-breaking route into a 46-yard catch-and-run completion.
Paramount among Nill’s post-game thoughts was the fact that the full-bloom potential of the UBC offence would not reach ultimate fruition until its pass game became the twin brother of its run game.
“We have to get No. 7 going,” the coach said of Viotto who was 12-of-23 for 189 yards, one touchdown and one interception. “If No. 7 is struggling, our whole team struggles.”
Yet maybe there is something to the theory that any time an element is introduced to either an offence or a defence that performs well above or well below the expected norms, that a period of adjustment is inevitable.
We’re talking here, of course, about the spike in the UBC run game brought by Larozar’s snap-to-snap home run potential. It has been so reliable over the last eight quarters that the very nature of trying to coach it by feel may actually take an extended period of acclimation before a truly balanced and rhythmic offence begins to emerge.
There are so many moving parts to consider, including all of the ones within an opposition defence.
Afterwards, Nill acknowledged that possibility but wasn’t about to move off a stance that has become the bedrock of his coaching philosophy.
“The biggest challenge UBC football has… the young men are talented enough. The young men work hard. But they don’t believe they can run with the big dogs yet,” he said immediately following Friday’s win. “They’re more comfortable playing from behind when the pressure’s off, instead of taking the fight to guys.”
That’s code for ‘They don’t yet know how good they really are.’ Nill circled back on a similar theme before heading off the field.
“I mean, this game… football is about dominating your opponent, about going in and impacting your will on your opponent. The teams that are the best ones are the ones that have the confidence to play this game the right way, and they enjoy that. It’s like being in a heavyweight fight going up against Mike Tyson and you get fired up for it. I want my guys to embrace in being a good football team.”
At which point, your author couldn’t help but remind him that now into his 12th season at UBC, this might be the most radars-at-the-ready he has ever been in terms of nipping bad habits in the bud, even in the aftermath of victory.
And so what does all of that say about the potential of his 2026 team, one which now sits in a four-way tie for first place at 2-1 and this Saturday (3 p.m. PT, CanadaWestTV) hits the road to face one of them in the Manitoba Bisons?
“I have coached 35 years, and I know when we’re pretenders and I know when we have a chance,” the three-time Vanier Cup national championship-winning head coach said of past teams at not only UBC, but at Calgary and St. Mary’s.
“I never guarantee,” he continued. “I always say we either don’t have a chance or we have a chance. This team has a chance.”
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