USC Is Stunned, 34-14, While UCLA Wins on a Stunner : Bruins Capitalize on Own Mistakes, Beat Arizona on Green’s Run, 32-25

Something strange happened to the UCLA Bruins Saturday on their way to the Aloha Bowl or whatever their final destination may be.

They won a game, a very strange game, which of course means that, suddenly and unexpectedly, they’re back dipping their fingers in the Rose Bowl again.

“I just knew that if we somehow beat Arizona, we could take this conference and flip it upside down,” UCLA Coach Terry Donahue said.

Consider it flipped. In fact, consider the entire Pacific 10 totally topsy-turvy right now. Look at USC. Look at Washington State. Now look at UCLA. As usual, the Bruins are right there, busily upsetting things like the previously unbeaten Wildcats.

How the Bruins won their first Pac-10 game should be a book. A comic book.

The Bruins tore several pages out of their (mis)play book and staked Arizona to an 18-0 halftime lead, then inexplicably scored 25 points in the fourth quarter to upset the Wildcats, 32-25, Saturday at the Rose Bowl.

Gaston Green scored the winning touchdown with 41 seconds left in the game on a 32-yard run down the left sideline, which as hard as it may be to believe, might have been a mistake.

Green’s touchdown run came only 2 minutes 46 seconds after the Wildcats had gone ahead, 25-24, on a trick-play--a 15-yard scoring pass from a tailback, David Adams, to flanker Derek Hill, followed by the successful extra-point kick.

Now, consider that Arizona’s comeback came after Green had scored on a 10-yard run on which he actually ran the wrong play.

Quarterback Matt Stevens had checked off the play at the line of scrimmage, but Green went ahead and ran the first play.

“I messed up, but I guess it turned out all right,” Green said.

Actually, UCLA also scored its game-winning touchdown by mistake, too, which shouldn’t be so surprising, the way things were going.

On Green’s 32-yard ramble, during which he broke at least three tackles, Stevens had planned only on Green getting the ball in good field-goal position for kicker David Franey.

“We wanted to keep the clock running and kick the field goal to win the game,” Stevens said. “But when you have that kind of talent in the backfield, those things happen.”

During the first half for UCLA, nothing of that sort happened. Only bad things.

Take the first quarter, which Donahue wishes somebody had.

“It did not look to me that one person did the right thing,” Donahue said.

He was talking about what happened to UCLA while attempting to punt, normally a simple operation, but not this time.

Arizona blocked not one, but two , of Harold Barkate’s punts, and the first was recovered in the end zone for a Wildcat touchdown and a 10-0 lead.

That came after Stevens threw an interception on perfect pass to Arizona’s Byron Evans on the Bruins’ first series of downs, setting up a 35-yard field goal by Gary Costen.

Later in the quarter, Green was trapped in the end zone by Stan Mataele for a safety and the Wildcats had a 12-0 lead.

It was the first safety scored against the Bruins in six years.

It was also something else to Arizona Coach Larry Smith: “Crazy.”

Actually, UCLA was fortunate not to have been completely buried by the end of the quarter. The Bruins had the ball five times, and their possessions ended this way: interception, punt, blocked punt, blocked punt and safety.

“Everything that could have happened bad, did,” Donahue said. “Everything went wrong.”

Costen kicked two more field goals in the second quarter, each time after the UCLA defense stopped the drives at its own 19, and Arizona’s 18-0 lead at halftime didn’t really seem so much to the Bruins.

It was like Smith said: “We should have been up, 30-0.”

While Smith might have been having halftime laments over his team’s missed chances to score more points after all the UCLA mistakes, Donahue was busy addressing his team in no uncertain terms. Wide receiver Paco Craig, who was later to figure in one of the game’s biggest plays, said there was no mistaking Donahue’s message.

“He said ‘Don’t go in the tank,’ ” Craig said. “He said to play hard and if we were going to go down, we’d go down fighting.”

Instead, the Bruins went on to win, but it wasn’t until the defense came up with the play that turned things around. In keeping with the theme of the game, it was a weird play.

Six plays into the third quarter, Arizona quarterback Alfred Jenkins threw a pass over the middle toward split end Jon Horton, but free safety James Washington intercepted it.

However, Adams stuck his helmet into Washington and popped the ball sideways, directly into the hands of UCLA cornerback Darryl Henley, who took off on a 54-yard run for a touchdown.

Donahue called the touchdown “instant hope,” but Henely saw it another way.

“I was just in the right place at the right time,” said Henley, who spoke for the defense in believing that the Bruins could somehow overcome Arizona’s 18-0 halftime lead.

“We weren’t as bad as we were playing,” he said.

And neither were the Wildcats as good as they were playing. At halftime, Arizona had only 42 yards passing, and although Adams already had 75 yards on the ground, UCLA actually controlled the ball a minute longer than Arizona in the half.

“We were still kind of in the game,” Donahue said. “Our players felt strongly at halftime that they were better than that. The realization hit them. Even though we were down, 18-0, the defense hadn’t given up any of those points.”

The defense would eventually allow a very big touchdown in the fourth quarter, but by then, the offense had decided to start pulling its share. And surprisingly enough, Stevens was the player making it all happen.

Although Stevens had been given a vote of confidence by Donahue earlier in the week, perhaps many of those fans among the 51,279 in the Rose Bowl who booed Stevens did not know or care.

Donahue pulled Stevens for one second-quarter series after a near interception, but he told his fifth-year senior that Stevens was going back in the game shortly. Finally, Donahue’s confidence paid off.

Stevens’ passing kept alive each of the three fourth-quarter Bruin touchdown drives and he finished with a career-high 284 yards on 22 completions in 37 passes. In the second half, Stevens completed 15 of 21 passes for 211 yards and a touchdown.

The Bruins were already driving when the fourth-quarter began, and Franey’s 29-yard field goal brought UCLA to within 18-10. Arizona ran five plays and punted to the Bruins, who took the ball on their own 14.

On second and 17 at the 22, Stevens threw long downfield to Craig, who outjumped safety Chuck Cecil for the ball as it was tipped up in the air, then caught it near the Arizona 20 and took off for the end zone, where he finished a 78-yard touchdown play.

“We felt all year that the offense was going to explode,” Craig said. “We just didn’t have no ignition, no spark. We finally got one.”

Stevens’ pass to Green on an attempted two-point conversion was batted away, but now UCLA trailed only 18-16.

Arizona ran only three more plays before the Bruins got the ball back again when linebacker Greg Bolin knocked the ball away from Hill and left cornerback Chuckie Miller landed on it at the Wildcat 44.

A 19-yard run by Green on third and six gave UCLA a first and goal at the nine. Stevens threw an incompletion, then Green ran the wrong play but scored from nine yards out. Stevens passed to fullback Marcus Greenwood for two points.

Now UCLA was ahead for the first time, 24-18, but Jenkins brought Arizona right down the field to a third and seven at the Bruin 15. Adams took a pitch to the right side, but instead of running, the tailback lofted a pass over strong safety Craig Rutledge’s head. Hill caught the pass for a touchdown and a 25-24 Arizona lead with 3:27 to go.

Stevens set up the Bruins with a first and 10 at their own 24, but he was called for intentional grounding on first down.

So if the Bruins were going to come back and win, the offense would have to do it beginning with a second and 29 on their own five-yard line. That’s just what they did.

Stevens hit Green for 11 yards, then on third and 18, connected with Craig for a 23-yard gain and the Bruins were on their way. Two more Stevens passes, an 11-yarder to Dorrell and a 12-yarder to Flipper Anderson, helped the Bruins get to the 32.

Donahue called timeout with 49 seconds left. On the next play, Green broke loose for the winning touchdown. Green, who wound up with 78 yards on 19 carries, was mobbed by this teammates, a treatment duplicated on the beleaguered Bruin offense as it left the field.

“We’re over the hill now,” Green said. “We know we haven’t been playing like we should have.”

Said Stevens: “We’ve been real desperate.”

Said Donahue: “There are times when you are simply not going to be denied.

Maybe this was one of those times.”

Now, all of a sudden, the Bruins are talking Rose Bowl again. Stranger things have happened, but not on Saturday.