LAS VEGAS — You've got to feel for UCLA placekicker Kai Forbath, the redshirt freshman whose up-and-down Las Vegas Bowl experience rivaled that of the roller coaster outside the New York, New York casino just down Tropicana Boulevard from Sam Boyd Stadium.
He started Saturday night by bouncing not one but several warm-up kicks off the left upright and at least one more during halftime warm-ups.
During the game, he kicked a 22-yard field goal midway in the opening quarter for the game's first score and then added a bowl-record 52-yarder late in the second quarter and nailed his only point-after attempt.
The latter came on the first-half's final play after the Bruin offense scored a gimmee touchdown set up by a poorly called Cougar play.
In the second half, he booted another record-setting long-distance field goal — a 50-yarder with 6:24 left in the game — that pulled UCLA to within 17-16 and gave him a UCLA-best five FGs of 50 yards or more in a career.
After his first year of collegiate placekicking, he's already No. 9 on UCLA's list of career field goals with 25.
But the best seemingly was yet to come, when the Bruins started at their own 2-yard line with 2:02 to play and needing a score to break the one-point deficit. UCLA's offense obliged, moving to the BYU 11 before calling time out with three seconds remaining.
After shutting out the high-octane Cougar offense in the second half, all the Bruins needed to win was a 28-yard field goal from Forbath — a mere chip shot after his previous 50-yard boomers.
Forbath's name was being penciled in on nearly every MVP ballot.
BYU didn't bother to use either of its two remaining timeouts to ice Forbath for the game's final play.
The snap, the place, the hold, the kick — they all seemed fine ...
Until the ball's trajectory took an awkward tangent en route to the goalposts, the kick having been altered first at the line of scrimmage by a swat from Cougar nose tackle Eathyn Manumaleuna and then by teammate Brett Denney.
The ball fell harmlessly short of uprights, instantly deflating a win-anticipating UCLA sideline and jumpstarting the celebration among Cougar players and the field-rushing BYU fans.
Forbath, like his Bruin teammates, stood stunned by the play. They silently shuffled off the sideline and to the locker room, with Forbath reportedly forwarded on to the team bus and not available to media postgame interviews.
UCLA defensive back Chris Horton was left to sum up the Bruins' fate.
"I mean, it's rough," the senior safety said. "You battle an entire game and we get our last drive and we get in field position and just knowing we're going to win the game, and they block a field goal — it's tough. It's really tough, especially for seniors playing our last game. But that's football."
For Forbath, it might be a frustrating end to a stellar individual game and season effort.
Still, he accounted for 10 of UCLA's 16 total points. And with three years of eligibility remaining, the California native should bounce back and boot plenty of plenty of Bruin field goals — including game-winners — in the seasons to come.