Nebraska Air Show Taylor-Made to Beat UCLA : Quarterback Throws 5 Scoring Passes in a 42-33 Victory Over Bruins

Strange but true: UCLA shut down Nebraska’s vaunted running game, outgained Nebraska in first downs and total yardage, recovered four fumbles and still lost, 42-33.

Strange but true: Nebraska quarterback Steve Taylor injured his left shoulder in the first quarter and had to abandon his specialty, the option play, which forced him into the dropback passing game that did in the Bruins.

Strange but true: Taylor completed only 10 passes, and five were for touchdowns, which broke the school record of four touchdown passes shared by David Humm, Vince Ferragamo and Turner Gill, and tied the Big Eight record for touchdowns held by none other than Oregon State basketball Coach Ralph Miller. (Miller threw his five touchdown passes for Kansas in 1938).

Strange, too, that UCLA tailback Gaston Green, who ended up with three touchdowns and a couple of two-point conversions for 22 points, was held to 46 yards, ending his streak of eight straight games of more than 100 yards.

Strange that UCLA Coach Terry Donahue was taking no solace in the fact that his defense played so well against the run or that his Bruins gave the Cornhuskers a good run early or that the score was so much closer than it has been in the last couple of humiliations.

No, Donahue came in here hoping that his No. 3-ranked team would upset the No. 2 team, and he had nothing to do with talk of a moral victory.

“It was a flat-out defeat,” he said.

Donahue was bitterly disappointed to know that his team let the game get out of hand with dropped passes, inopportune fumbles, a blocked punt, a wild snap on a field goal attempt that ended up in the wrong hands, and, most important, all those uncharacteristic breakdowns in the secondary that allowed the Cornhuskers those game-breaking passes.

In the past, the Bruins have been overmatched and manhandled. This time they were in the game, and they blew it.

Nebraska Coach Tom Osborne couldn’t figure it, either. He called his team’s running game “abysmal.” He said, “That’s not even football. . . . If you had told me that we would fumble the ball away four times and rush for 117 yards, I’d have said we’d get whipped by 21 points.

“I don’t want to be a spoilsport, because we won the game, but we could have won by more.”

So after the standing-room-only crowd of 76,313 had left Memorial Stadium thinking it had seen quite an entertaining show, the Nebraska coach was standing at one end complaining that his team could have played better, and the UCLA coach was standing at the other end complaining that his team could have played better.

And both were right.

But it was UCLA that really came apart when the game was still on the line.

As Donahue said, “At halftime, we thought we had a chance, but that doggone third quarter got away from us.”

UCLA was down, 14-10, at the half. And the Bruins set themselves up for a strong second-half start even before the game started by electing to receive the second-half kickoff when they won the coin toss.

But on the second play from scrimmage, UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman was sacked and the ball got away.

Nebraska linebacker Doug Welniak recovered on the UCLA 12 and four plays later I-back Ken Clark scored from the one.

On the next series, Aikman threw a picture-perfect long pass to split end David Keating on third-and-18, and Keating dropped it.

Less than two minutes had ticked off the clock since his last scoring pass when Taylor threw a first-down pass to split end Rod Smith that Smith turned into a 48-yard touchdown play.

All of a sudden it was 28-10.

Aikman came back to find split end Flipper Anderson on a 59-yard pass play as the Bruins made their way to the Nebraska 11. But Alfredo Velasco’s field goal attempt went awry when the snap sailed over the holder’s head and Cartier Walker recovered it for Nebraska.

Yes, there were some ugly moments.

Toward the end of the third quarter Donahue turned to backup quarterback Brendan McCracken and several other second-line players, including tailback Eric Ball. That unit drove 60 yards and scored on Ball’s six-yard run so that the score at the end of the third quarter was 28-17.

After Taylor threw a 35-yard touchdown pass to tight end Todd Millikan to start the fourth quarter, Aikman came back. But his next two series came up short and before he could score Taylor had thrown his fifth touchdown pass, a 33-yarder to Millikan that made it 42-17 with 2:19 to play.

McCracken came back to lead the Bruins’ last two scoring drives and Green picked up his last two touchdowns, getting the ball back for the final score when linebacker Marcus Patton forced a fumble and cornerback Scott Stevenson recovered it.

UCLA ended up with 361 total yards to 334 for Nebraska. Aikman completed 14 of 22 passes for 211 yards.

Nebraska’s defensive coordinator, Charlie McBride, said that the Cornhuskers hoped to hold the Bruins to 10 points--but the Bruins got that in the first half on Green’s four-yard touchdown run and a 23-yard field goal by Velasco.

McBride said, “They are really going to be a good team. I don’t think they’ll drop any from a game like this. They’re going to be able to do what they want as the season goes on.

“Toward the end, it was mentally and physically tough for our players. We did make some mental mistakes late. . . . They were a physical defensive team and what scared me about this team is that they had a lot of experience and a lot of seniors that know how to play.”

The Bruin defense has a lot of veteran players, especially in the secondary where a lot of mistakes were being made.

Senior strong safety James Washington couldn’t offer much of an explanation, except to say that there were too many mental breakdowns.

Cornerback Darryl Henley acknowledged that the Bruins had played “excellent” run defense but couldn’t seem to react fast enough on the play-action passes.

While the Bruin defense was busy stopping that Nebraska ground game, they were getting killed by the long pass.

Linebacker Ken Norton noted that Nebraska threw a couple of long passes when the Bruins weren’t expecting them.

The Bruin offense, on the other hand, didn’t have that luxury once Nebraska took its big lead.

Donahue said: “When you’re behind in the game and when you keep getting behind in down-and-distance, it’s hard to play your game, hard to get into the rhythm that you really want to play. . . . You hate to use your best back (Green) as a decoy that much.”

It was more interesting than Nebraska’s 40-13 rout of the Bruins in 1973. More interesting than the 42-10 trouncing Nebraska won in 1983 or the 42-3 wipeout by the Cornhuskers in 1984.

“I think this is a much better UCLA team than we’ve played earlier,” Osborne said.

And in years past, this game has been costly in terms of injuries. This time the Bruins who are banged up are not expected to be out more than a week or two. Nose guard Mike Lodish suffered a bruised knee. Tight end Charles Arbuckle has a contusion on his hand. Offensive tackle Russ Warnick has a bruised shoulder. Inside linebacker Chance Johnson has a bruised knee. And defensive tackle Jeff Glasser has a sprained ankle.

None of the Cornhuskers suffered series injuries.

The only person carried off the field was an official, Richard Schnell. The early report was that he had a broken leg after crashing out of bounds while trying to keep up with Bruin split end Paco Craig on a pass play.

Strange, but true.