UCLA Is 45-14 Winner After a Loss It Would Just as Sooner Forget

Remember Oklahoma? Well, forget it.

While UCLA’s first victory of the season may have lacked in artistry or tension or even competition, the Bruins’ 45-14 mashing of San Diego State Saturday night ranked high in the redemption category, so it seemed to have served its purpose.

This one was a complete wipeout, which is just what the Bruins needed after having their helmets handed to them two weeks ago at Norman, Okla. Now, they’re 1-1 and feeling much better about themselves.

“All we wanted to do was redeem ourselves for that embarrassment in Oklahoma,” said tailback Gaston Green, who nearly achieved that goal single-handedly by scoring touchdowns on runs of 63, 2 and 2 yards.

A crowd of 50,338, the third-largest in San Diego State history, watched at Jack Murphy Stadium as UCLA wrecked the Aztecs with a numbingly efficient display on both sides of the line of scrimmage.

Worried about the Bruin offense and absolutely petrified by Matt Stevens? Do not be concerned, at least for now.

Green rushed for 131 yards in just 16 carries and led an offense that exhibited an entirely new dimension--a passing attack, or something close to one.

“I didn’t have a great or even good game,” Stevens said. “It was just par. I’m just glad we won the game and the monkey’s off my back now.”

Stevens finished the game throwing for 119 yards and a touchdown. He completed only four passes, none in the second half when he tried just one, but why bother counting anything except the final score?

“He didn’t complete many passes, but the ones that he hit were gamebreakers,” Coach Terry Donahue said.

Stevens used his completions well. One went 50 yards to set up a score and another went 40 yards and was worth a touchdown. Both catches were made by Flipper Anderson.

“I should have completed a lot more passes than I did,” Stevens said. “I’m going to have to do a whole lot better job.”

And what of the job turned in by that itty-bitty UCLA defense we’ve heard so much about, the one that allowed all those points to Oklahoma in a 38-3 rout? The Bruin defenders, who the entire game had a clear shot at Todd Santos, the Aztecs’ record-setting quarterback, finished with five sacks and five other tackles behind the line of scrimmage.

After gaining just 34 yards on the ground against Oklahoma, the Bruins rolled for 247. And after giving up 470 yards to the Sooners, the Bruins held the Aztecs to 3.

UCLA nose guard Mike Lodish, who had two sacks, as did linebacker Eric Smith, said the Bruins’ quickness helped them on defense. And believe it or not, so did getting crushed by Oklahoma.

“It was totally demoralizing, what happened to us at OU,” Lodish said.

Even though the Bruins had trouble scoring points at Oklahoma, they found out, sooner rather than later, that the Aztecs are not on quite the same level as the Sooners.

Once the Bruins got the ball for the first time and the offense got the Green light, it took exactly two plays and 43 seconds for them to score.

Green scored the first of his two touchdowns in the first half on a leisurely 63-yard run down the left sideline after taking a quick pitch. After Mel Farr Jr. sprung him with the only block he needed, Green had an easy run.

“The only thing that I was worried about was that I was going to fall down,” Green said.

He didn’t, so Green returned later to score again on a two-yard run that pumped the UCLA lead to 17-7 early in the second quarter. That touchdown was set up by Stevens’ 50-yard pass down the left side to Anderson, whose foot just dragged the sideline at the two-yard line.

By halftime, the Aztecs were just about extinct. The Bruins led, 31-7, and looked like an entirely different team than the one that had been mauled in their only other game.

At Oklahoma, the UCLA defense played well until it ran out of gas after being forced to spend too much time on the field because the offense was so terrible.

Once again, there was little wrong with the UCLA defense. Santos wound up with 15 completions in 29 attempts worth 151 yards, a touchdown pass in the fourth quarter and the school record for career passing yardage.

The Aztecs, who gave up 154 yards on the ground to the Bruins in the first half, were held to a minus-17 yards rushing at the same time. That statistic reflected the four sacks of Santos, who experienced only limited success under a pressure Bruin defense.

It got so bad that the Bruins forced San Diego State into a shotgun offense to try and take the pressure off Santos.

That didn’t work either. Santos had 10 completions of 21 passes in the first half, but they went for only 118 yards and no touchdowns.

That explains the San Diego State offense, but there was something else to consider: Going into the third quarter, Stevens had passed for more yards than Santos.

What in the world got into Matt Stevens?

Sure, Stevens completed only four passes in the first half, but at least they were all to his teammates this time.

The Bruins got lucky when right cornerback Clarence Nunn sprained his ankle and had to be replaced by a freshman, Lyndon Early.

Unfortunately, Early was too late too often. It didn’t take long for Stevens to take advantage of the freshman. The 50-yard pass to Anderson came on the first series after Nunn left the game.

But Stevens also did a lot on his own, although he wasn’t needed much except for handing the ball off in the second half, then giving way to backup Brendan McCracken in the fourth quarter with the score 38-14.

Stevens’ name was first on the Bruin redemption list. After being intercepted five times at Oklahoma, Stevens started a little shakily, but he finished off the first half with 119 total yards and a perfectly thrown 40-yard touchdown pass to Anderson with only 13 seconds left.

That drive covered 66 yards in eight plays and was kept alive by a roughing-the-kicker penalty that gave the Bruins a first down at the Aztec 33.

Stevens’ second long pass to Anderson, whose two first-half catches covered 90 yards, was on a play-action when Anderson outran Aztec defender Steve Lauter into the end zone.

Actually, the Bruins did quite a bit of running in the first half, especially Green, who had 85 yards in 8 carries and his 2 touchdowns. Green had a little making up to do, too, after gaining only 40 yards at Oklahoma, but like Stevens, he came through.

In the meantime, it was a surprise that Eric Ball even came at all. Ball, who wasn’t supposed to make the trip, played long enough to carry 7 times for 47 yards in the first half, including a 13-yard touchdown run that made the score 24-7.

The Bruins got some help on this drive, which covered just 33 yards, when Darryl Henley returned a punt 8 yards and the Aztecs were penalized 15 more for a personal foul on a late hit.

However, Ball’s time on the job was brief. After he scored, Ball took the rest of the night off when his hamstring apparently tightened up again.

There really wasn’t much else that went wrong for the Bruins. A bad pitchout by Stevens that went behind James Primus, who didn’t deserve getting charged with a 30-yard loss on the play, was recovered by the Aztecs at the 20.

That gave San Diego State a great shot at a gift touchdown in the third quarter.

But the Bruin defense wouldn’t allow it. Primus scored the final UCLA touchdown on a two-yard run in the fourth quarter, right after San Diego State’s Chris Hardy ran one yard to get the Aztecs within 38-14.

But the UCLA defense had already seen how the offense had come back to life, so it was almost as if it also had something to show.

And as a team, UCLA certainly had something to prove, which it did.

Bruin Notes San Diego State quarterback Todd Santos played the game without knowing that his younger brother, Ron, had been injured in an apparent hit-and-run accident Friday night in Oakland. Santos’ parents did not tell Todd about Ron’s injury until after the game. Ron, a quarterback at Kings River Junior College in Selma, suffered a broken arm and leg. . . . Santos broke Brian Sipe’s school record for passing yardage and now has 5,727 yards. . . . Eight Bruin runners carried the ball, but one of the better runs was a 12-yard gain by Bob Garabaldi on a double reverse.