UCLA center Kai Maiava sees a future different from the past

He looks at his flat feet as he tells you what will happen this fall.

"It won't be like last year."

He says it again, like a cadence, only this time he laughs, as if last year was something of a humorous, far-fetched tale.

"It won't be like last year."

Then Kai Maiava, a 6-foot-1, 309-pound center who might be the UCLA football team's biggest off-season acquisition, looks up, indicating he's not joking.

He will have a say in the matter as the expected leader of the offensive line and as a potential building block for the future.

As UCLA prepares to open official practice Monday, there appears nowhere to go but up for a line that last season was among the worst units in the country.

The Bruins averaged only 82.75 rushing yards a game -- 2.62 yards a carry -- and gave up 35 sacks. The rankings indicate the worst: of 119 major-college teams, UCLA ranked 110th in allowing sacks, 111th in total offense and 116th in yards rushing per game.

The players seem to know these numbers by heart. In conversation, they recite them as if they are written on the inside of their helmets.

"The coaches are always reminding us, 'What was it, 116th in the country?' " says redshirt senior guard Nick Ekbatani, noting the rushing offense's ranking.

Ekbatani is the only returning lineman to have started all 12 games last year. And to be sure, there were injuries and, even then, inexperience that contributed to those results.

"What we went through last year, no team could survive," says offensive line coach Bob Palcic, who is now in his second year.

There were nine starting combinations in 12 games.

"Some weeks, I couldn't have told you until the day of the game who was starting where," says Kevin Prince, UCLA's quarterback.

Maiava watched it all from the sideline, sitting out the year because of NCAA transfer rules after he left Colorado.

The last college football play he took part in was on Dec. 31, 2007, as Colorado tried some last-second desperation laterals against Alabama in the Independence Bowl.

The play didn't make it to midfield and Alabama won, 30-24.

Maiava played one season for Colorado but says, "I always wanted to be a Bruin," and he laughs again because of the reason why and how things worked out.

The way he tells it, he wanted to play football for UCLA the day his older brother, Kaluka, signed to play linebacker at USC.