THE ALOHA BOWL : UCLA Out to Extend Bowl Win Streak to 6

After a couple of days of strolling on the beaches wearing flowered shirts and straw hats by day, and making the scene in the discos of Waikiki by night, it’s time for the Bruins to get down to the business of playing football.

UCLA will be going for its sixth straight bowl victory in today’s nationally televised game against Florida (12:30, Channel 7). And the Bruins are all very much aware of that streak.

The Bruins are favored to beat Florida today, but then, they were favored to beat USC and go to the Rose Bowl. So much for that.

UCLA is ranked No. 10 and is going into the game as the Pacific 10 Conference co-champion with a 9-2 record. Florida struggled through its Southeastern Conference schedule and is 6-5.

But that 6-5 record is misleading. The five teams that Florida lost to were Miami, now ranked No. 2; Florida State, No. 3; Auburn, No. 6; LSU, No. 7, and Georgia, No. 15.

The Gators were competitive in almost all of those games.

Florida is not a team to be taken lightly. In fact, Florida and UCLA are very similar.

When the selections were made, Aloha Bowl officials announced: “The perfect match.”

UCLA and Florida are both well-balanced offensive teams that are led by outstanding quarterbacks. And both rely heavily on outstanding running backs. UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman is ranked second in the nation in passing efficiency, and is considered to be among the best quarterbacks in college football. Florida quarterback Kerwin Bell is a four-year starter who has been considered among the best from the start of his career.

Even with tailback Gaston Green sidelined with a thigh injury, the Bruins’ Eric Ball, star of the ’86 Rose Bowl game, will make an interesting counterpoint to Florida freshman Emmitt Smith, who set the school single-season record by rushing for 1,341 yards.

UCLA’s defense led the Pac-10, and Florida’s defense led the SEC.

“There are a lot of stars in this game,” UCLA Coach Terry Donahue said. “There are some very, very fine athletes on both sides of the line of scrimmage.”

Florida Coach Galen Hall is just as impressed with UCLA. “They should be favored. They have a very good football team,” Hall said.

“For us to go out and pick a team to play in a bowl game, this would be the last one we’d pick. We think they’re the best team out there . . . UCLA can play with anybody we’ve played all year; they have that much talent.

“They had an off day against USC. But they can score from anywhere. They have such speed on defense. They’re the kind of team you would like to be on defense. They play control football, gang tackle . . .

“And you can’t give Aikman all day to sit and throw on you.”

Aikman completed 159 of 243 passes this season, a completion percentage of 65.4%, for 2,354 yards. But UCLA averaged just slightly more yardage passing than rushing (229.1 yards a game passing, 215.1 yards a game rushing) because Green was busy rolling up 1,098 yards. This was the first time that UCLA has had a 2,000-yard passer and a 1,000-yard rusher in the same year.

Today, without Green and with starting fullback Mel Farr Jr. out with a hamstring problem, the Bruins might lean more heavily on the passing game.

Florida might be more likely to lean on its running game. Bell completed 140 of 239 passes (58.6%) for 1,769 yards, but the Florida receivers are not the strength of the offense. Smith is.

“We’ve always been the type of football team that likes to run,” Hall said. “We like our tailback to carry maybe 30 times a game. We’d like to have two guys carry it 15 times each. We believe in the running game. We believe in a very balanced attack.”

Bell said that he hoped to get a passing game established early if the Gators were going to be able to run against the Bruins. “The strength of the UCLA defense is their linebackers,” Bell said. “They’re probably the best linebackers we’ve faced all season. Their linebackers really figure into their passing attack, so it’s not going to be easy.”

Bell said that if he had to compare the UCLA defense to another team, he’d compare it to his own team’s defense.

Donahue agreed that there was a similarity between the Florida defense and the UCLA defense. But he said that he’d compare Florida’s defense to Arizona State’s. Donahue said: “They’re a gifted team physically. They have team speed. Their strength is defense--they led the SEC in defense and that’s a very good defensive conference . . . They are very well-coached and, to me, a quick, aggressive, active-type team, one which will give us everything we want.”

Aloha Bowl Notes

ABC’s telecast of the game will not be shown in Hawaii, yet ticket sales were very slow up to game day. If attendance for today’s game doesn’t top 20,104, it will be the smallest crowd the Bruins played before all season. That was the number of fans who showed up in Corvallis, Ore., to see UCLA play in Oregon State’s homecoming game Nov. 7 . . . KMPC (710) will broadcast the game live. . . . UCLA is playing in its seventh straight bowl game today and is the only team that currently has a winning streak of five straight bowl victories. After losing in the Bluebonnet Bowl in 1981, the Bruins won the Rose Bowl game the next two years, the Fiesta Bowl after the ’84 season, the Rose Bowl game after the ’85 season and the Freedom Bowl last season . . . This is the ninth bowl game for the Bruins since Terry Donahue became coach 12 years ago . . . Donahue has a record of 97-36-7 (.718) as UCLA coach. A victory today would make him the first coach in UCLA history to record two 10-win seasons (in 1982 and 1987).

UCLA is 2-2 against Florida, but the teams haven’t met since 1958 when Florida won, 21-14, at the Coliseum. UCLA won in 1931 and 1932, and Florida won in 1941 . . . Florida quarterback Kerwin Bell on the pressure in this game: “It’s a different kind of pressure. It’s not like an SEC game when you know if you lose one, you’re out (of the title race). We have four true rivals--Miami, Auburn, Georgia and Florida State. It’s not like one of those games. Every one of our games has been pressure-packed.” . . . Several Bruins who were injured during the year are available to play today, including tight end Joe Pickert, who is coming back from knee surgery; quarterback Brendan McCracken, who is coming back from a broken collarbone; linebacker Billy Ray, who is coming back from a broken leg. Tight end Charles Arbuckle, the starting tight end early in the year, was expected to be back but he is having continued trouble with his knee. Donahue, in saying that he does not expect heat to be as big a factor as cold was when the Bruins lost in the Liberty Bowl to Alabama in 1976: “I looked across the field and there was Bear Bryant wearing a ski mask and looking like the Masked Marvel. He had a heater behind him that looked like a blast furnace. I had this little bitty heater and I said, ‘Oh, my, goodness. I think we’ve screwed this thing up. We’re in trouble.’ ” . . . Donahue on Emmitt Smith: “He’s fantastic. He’s in Gaston’s class, for sure. He’s a classy-looking guy. He just jumps off the film. When a young guy like Emmitt Smith comes into your program, it’s uplifting. You know he’ll win a lot of games for you for a lot of years.”