With Brett Hundley Back in the Fold, UCLA Is Still a Threat for Pac-12 Title

Sun Devil Stadium may have gone quiet after the third of UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley's four touchdown passes Thursday night in the No. 11-ranked Bruins' 62-27 win over No. 15 Arizona State.

However, a message reverberated loud and clear through the silence that followed Hundley's 80-yard connection with Jordan Payton to open the second half: UCLA is still very much a threat to win the Pac-12 championship.

Officially, it was Hundley's second 80-yard score of the night, though considerable yards after the catch made both possible. The first was Eldridge Massington's pinball play to cut into Arizona State's 17-6 lead early in the second quarter.

Massington's run gave Hundley his first touchdown since returning from an elbow injury that sidelined him for most of UCLA's Week 3 win over Texas. Once that first one was under his belt, Hundley got rolling en route to his best game of 2014 and arguably the top performance of his college career.

"It's nothing that I did. It's what the team did," Hundley said in his postgame interview with Fox Sports 1. "[Offensive] line did a great job, and I give them all the credit."

UCLA surrendered 11 sacks through its first three games, but the previously maligned Bruins front gave Hundley plenty of time to operate Thursday.

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Hundley also praised the wide receiving corps for "balling out." Jordan Payton and Thomas Duarte led the group with a combined nine receptions for 246 yards and two scores.

But UCLA's quarterback deserves plenty of praise as well.

Hundley went 18-of-23 passing for 355 yards. He scored a fifth touchdown on the ground and rushed for 72 yards with reckless abandon—perhaps a bit too reckless at times. 

The quarterback had all of Westwood, California, holding its collective breath when he hurdled a defender on a first-quarter carry eerily reminiscent of the play on which he injured his elbow.

That wasn't all Hundley jumped on the night; the redshirt junior also sprung right back onto the Heisman Trophy radar with his stellar performance.  

Likewise, a UCLA team whose bandwagon lightened considerably after three close calls against Virginia, Memphis and Texas should re-emerge in the championship conversation.

The winner of the UCLA-Arizona State game has represented the South in every Pac-12 championship game since the event's inception in 2011. Those previous three meetings were decided by a combined eight points.

Unlike its last three contests with Arizona State—or its first three games of the 2014 season—UCLA didn't need to sweat out a single-digit decision.

The deluge started on the Massington touchdown reception, kicking off a 56-10 run that spanned the final three quarters.

While Hundley guided the offense with precision, Ishmael Adams scored UCLA's fourth defensive touchdown of the season.

His 95-yard return of a Mike Bercovici interception just before halftime completely swung the game's momentum, as B/R College Football Playoff guru Samuel Chi noted.

Adams also ran back a kickoff 100 yards—the first kick UCLA returned for a score in six years. That touchdown, an 89-yarder from Matthew Slater, came against Arizona State.

While everything went right for UCLA, just about everything went wrong for Arizona State. The Sun Devils were playing without their own preseason Heisman contender, quarterback Taylor Kelly, and the Bruins took advantage of the inexperienced Bercovici.

The Bruins intercepted him twice, the first of which came on Anthony Jefferson's takeaway from Sun Devils wide receiver Jaelen Strong.

UCLA capitalized on some big plays and the Sun Devils' quarterback situation. But also credit UCLA defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, who crafted a masterful game plan for Arizona State running back D.J. Foster.

Sun Devils head coach Todd Graham called Foster the "best player [he] ever coached" on Tuesday's Pac-12 coaches conference call, and the running back earned his coach's praise with a remarkable 9.4-yard-per-carry average coming into Thursday's contest.

Linebacker Eric Kendricks led an aggressive pursuit by the UCLA front seven, and Foster managed just 30 yards on nine carries.

With the UCLA defense slowing Arizona State's high-octane attack, and the Hundley-led Bruins offense scoring with ease, the team put together a truly complete game.

And now that it has that elusive, all-around performance under its belt, UCLA has a championship contender's look to it.

Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics compiled courtesy of ESPN.com.