PHOENIX — Jedd Fisch met with Chip Kelly one day after Kelly was hired to take over the program Fisch had been piloting for a week. The message was clear.

“You take this team until the bowl game is over,” the new UCLA head coach told the man wearing the program’s interim visor.

Five weeks later, Fisch’s job is almost done. He got the Bruins to a bowl game, and they’ll finish their season Tuesday against Kansas State in the Cactus Bowl at 6 p.m. in Phoenix.

Then he will pass the baton to Kelly, who is expected to usher in a new chapter for a program that’s thirsting for a winner again.

Tuesday will be the last stand for the 2017 Bruins. Despite an uncertain future, this year’s team has vowed to stay focused on its final task.

“We’ll worry about next year when that time comes,” safety Adarius Pickett said. “But as of right now, we’ve got to try to win this championship.”

When UCLA has the ball

The Bruins hoped they would be vying for a different championship this season, especially with the way the year started.

Quarterback Josh Rosen led them to the biggest comeback in school history in the season opener that seems like a lifetime ago now, especially with Rosen’s status in doubt for Tuesday’s bowl game. UCLA scored 35 unanswered points to close the game. The game-winning touchdown came on a fake spike. Under the Rose Bowl lights, Fisch and Rosen embraced after their first win as coach and quarterback.

After an offensive debacle last season, Fisch engineered a turnaround that took UCLA from 11th in the Pac-12 in scoring offense to fifth and 10th in total offense to third. It’s unlikely that he’ll get an encore in Westwood, though, as Kelly is known to call his own plays, a task Fisch cherishes also as an offensive coordinator.

The opportunity to call his own plays again called him from Ann Arbor, Mich. It was his seventh new job in the past 10 years and he may be preparing to make another transition. He’s unsure of what will come next. He just tries to set the example for his team to focus on what will come Tuesday.

“After the 26th, there’s going to be so much newness for them,” Fisch said of his players. “If they get distracted by it, they’re not going to be their best on the 26th. If I get distracted by what’s going to happen to me on the 27th, I’m not going to be my best on the 26th so we’re really trying to spend all of our time on where our feet are today.”

When Kansas State has the ball

The same way the UCLA offense rose, the defense faltered. Kelly has already rebuilt the defensive staff, hiring three new coaches for next year, led by defensive coordinator Jerry Azzinaro.

The former Cal defensive line coach is expected to modify UCLA’s defense to a 3-4 scheme, shifting from the 4-3 system the Bruins used for the past two years with inconsistent results.

With a young defensive front and battered linebackers, UCLA’s rushing defense is second-to-worst in the country, allowing 282.7 yards a game. Late improvement has allowed the Bruins to avoid becoming the first defense from a Power 5 conference to allow 300 rushing yards per game over a full season in 15 years.

“Everyone’s a veteran on this defense now,” senior defensive lineman Jacob Tuioti-Mariner said. “They’ve matured a lot.”

In a historically bad year, the Bruins gave up 457 rushing yards to Arizona, only 27 yards less than the modern record for a UCLA opponent in a single game, and allowed seven touchdowns of 40 yards or longer. A surprisingly strong performance against USC — a season-low 153 rushing yards allowed on 41 carries — provided a brief bright spot for a dark defensive season, and the Bruins want to go out with one more.

“As a team that had a lot of fun,” Pickett said of how he wants this team to be remembered, “as a team that went 6-0 in the Rose Bowl, as a team that won their last game in the Cactus Bowl. Just finishing this out right because we deserve that, we worked so hard for that.”