At Last, Bruins Reach End of the Road : Their Away Record Puts Them in Driver’s Seat for the Rose Bowl

At last, the end of the road.

After playing six of their first nine games away from home and emerging with a 7-1-1 record, UCLA’s Bruins may back in Los Angeles for good.

All that remains on the schedule are a game this Saturday at the Rose Bowl against Oregon State and a game at the Coliseum Nov. 23 against USC.

A victory in each of those would leave the Bruins with a 7-1 Pac-10 record and earn them a visit to the Rose Bowl Jan. 1.

Still, considering how well it has played on the road this season, UCLA might just as soon prefer to be the away team in its last two Pac-10 games.

“One of the coaches suggested that we might be better off to stay in our rhythm,” Coach Terry Donahue said. “He thought maybe this week we should bus to Burbank, fly to Orange County and come back up to Pasadena that way.”

Donahue is quite pleased with his team’s position in the Rose Bowl race. As it stands now, UCLA is tied with Arizona State with just one loss. If both finish tied in the standings, the Bruins would go to the Rose Bowl because they beat the Sun Devils earlier this season.

“It’s good to know that if we win our last two games, we’ll go to the Rose Bowl,” Donahue said. “But I also look at those last two games as huge obstacles.”

A strong believer in chemistry, Donahue notes that the chemistry is all in Oregon State’s favor this week. UCLA, after playing at Arizona in what the Arizona media considered “the biggest of all the big games” and coming away with a 24-19 victory, is due for a letdown. Oregon State, with an overall record of 3-6, is a team that might catch the Bruins looking ahead to USC.

“Oregon State beating Washington (21-20, three weeks ago) helped us for a lot of different reasons,” Donahue said. “For one thing, we needed for Washington to lose another game. But it also helped to get our team’s attention to believe that Oregon State is a good team. We have a lot of respect for Washington. When they beat us, it was no fluke. So our team has to respect a team that can beat Washington.”