The Sun Belt Conference has been making life miserable for Power Five programs in recent weeks. On Saturday, UCLA was close to being the latest to suffer an upset at the hands of a Sun Belt team. But the Bruins made the plays they needed to late, snuffing out a fake field goal attempt and then driving into field goal range while bleeding the clock to kick a game-winning field goal as time expired.

It wasn’t pretty, but UCLA was able to walk away from the Rose Bowl with a 32-31 win.

After, coach Chip Kelly met with the media to recap the action. Here’s everything he said.

On kicker Nicholas Barr-Mira going 4-for-4 on field goals and hitting the game-winner

“Honestly, I thought he had it. I thought he had kicked really well all day. He has been solid this last week. He kicked really well in practice. We always believe that you play the way you practice. The whole operation, between him, Jack (Landherr IV), Sean (Holland), has been really good. Felt good about the protection. Knew where he wanted the ball. We talk about that all the time — where do you want it? Some guys prefer it on the hash and some guys want it in the middle. Some guys want it left, middle. Felt like if we could have run it in to score, we would’ve done that. But we were not going to afford to do anything else besides that, so credit to him. I thought he was clutch. And I think that’s what you dream about as a little kid, kick a game-winning field goal. Down two, and we need three to win and he did it. I’m really proud of Nick.”

On South Alabama attempting a fake field goal late in the fourth quarter

“I wasn’t surprised. You know, we had talked all week long about some type of trickeration. They threw a flea flicker. Sometimes that happens when you have group of fives playing power fives. We had talked to our players about it. We practiced all week along about onside kick and some of those things that teams might dial up and try to do something. I thought that our guys did a really good job of defending it. I saw Carl (Jones Jr.) coming off the edge, and then it was really a big play by our defense when we needed one.”

On the Bruins winning in comeback fashion

“We talk all the time about three things that happen in a football game — momentum swings and random events and adversity. The key is that, if you’re a competitor, you respond when that happens. Non-competitors react. And I think that our guys responded in a good manner today. We obviously found ourselves in a hole, but I think that our sideline and our guys believed every single time that we were going to win the football game. We’ve just got to keep plugging away and keep playing. That’s a sign of a little bit of maturity, when you have a little bit of an older team. I think that our guys handled the situation, so I am proud of that. We have a ton to correct. We are getting into conference play now. There are a lot of positives from our mindset and our competitive response that I was really proud of with our guys today.”

On the challenges UCLA’s defense faced

“Well first thing, I think (USA quarterback) Carter (Bradley) was outstanding. He was a kid who had been in the portal and he was at Toledo. A lot of people tried to recruit him. I know his father Gus really well. Gus is the defensive coordinator for the Colts now, been a head coach in the league. And I thought that the kid has got tremendous poise, tremendous ball location. We’d talked about it in our visit with you guys on Monday, about how good of a football team that is. That is a really, really good football team. And we knew that this would be a closer, back-and-forth football game all along. There is nothing that they did that surprised us. I thought their running back was outstanding. People bounced off of him. He broke tackles. I think that they got a good scheme, offensively. They did some nice things. So, sometimes you’ve got to give them credit. They made some plays when they had to.”

On if it was good to see the team go through some adversity

“Yeah, I loved it. It was awesome and it felt great. No, I’m being sarcastic. I mean, in hindsight yeah, while it is going on you are not very excited about it. ‘Alright, this is good we’ve got some adversity and then we will just win.’ But it doesn’t just happen that way. But that is the great thing about football. And it happens every single week. I haven’t seen any scores throughout college football today, but there will be somebody where you’re like, ‘Who beat who?’ We talked about it immediately last week. There were three teams from this conference — Georgia Southern, Marshall, and App State — that went into A&M, Notre Dame, and Nebraska and beat them. So, it happens every week. That is why college football is great. You just don’t want to be on the side of when someone goes, ‘Hey did you see that score?’ and you were part of that score. You do not want to be part of that. But we were fortunate to come out on top today. We’ll get back to work on Monday. The out-of-conference part is over. Now everybody is getting into conference play and we’ve got to go.”

On WR Jake Bobo

“One of the things that we saw when we recruited Jake to come here, to have a go-to guy. We have the ability to move him around. He plays in a lot of different spots. He is also a tremendous blocker. I don’t think that people realize how good of a blocker he is in some of the things that he does. To have that versatility, to be able to move him around, he can handle anything. He has a lot of experience coming in from Duke and what he did there. But I’m really happy he’s a part of it. He’s a big, long, tall target. I think that Dorian is getting really comfortable with him.”

On WRs Logan Loya and Titus Mokiao-Atimalala

“I was really happy for both of those guys. They have worked so hard. Logan has been here for a little while, and he is such a savvy route-runner. That fourth down play, he was the third option. Some guys rushed that route. But he knows that he is three in the progression, but the timing of it was perfect. That’s the way that Logan is. I was really excited about that. He had a big catch on third down for us, we caught him in man coverage. He ran a great route. And then Titus came up big. I think that as Titus continues to get more comfortable in our offense and our terminology, hopefully we’ll continue to grow him. I feel good about what we are doing out wide. Kam Brown was back and Kam scored, really happy for Kam also. To add to Bobo and Kaz [Allen], to see Titus and Logan and Kaz step up, I feel pretty comfortable with where we are at wideout.”

On fumbles

“I mean, we had run that pitch play three or four times earlier. And it was successful. I’d have to look at the film to see what happened in terms of that decision. Then the one on the goal line, both Zach (Charbonnet) and Dorian (Thompson-Robinson), the two of them had talked about it. We didn’t get a clean handoff on that. We thought that Zach had scored on the play before. When you are in a one-point game, you start to think about those situations. We had turned the ball over and fumbled, and you cannot do that against a really good team. We were fortunate we got away with that today.”

On the mentality behind South Alabama’s fake field goal attempt

“That’s a question for (USA coach) Kane (Wommack), I don’t know what his thought process was there. We had talked all week long about those certain situations, that things would come up — whether it was a fake punt or a trick play. They ran a flea flicker and hit it down our sideline. So our coaching staff and players were aware that something could happen. We talk about how competitors respond. When they shifted out, there was no panic with our guys. We work with our field goal block team, every week, with who has got who. There was no panic from our defensive side.”

On Barr-Mira’s job as a punter

“We didn’t punt often but when we did punt, that is the one thing with Nick – he had four field goals, but I thought that he punted the ball really well. Nick is an outstanding directional punter. He keeps the ball away from the returner. He did a great job of pinning them down there deep. So for him to have double duty, to be a punter and a field goal guy, I am really proud of how Nick played today.”