Bruins Start Fast, Shuck Cornhuskers, 41-28 : UCLA Takes a 28-0 Lead in 1st Quarter

And you thought the America’s Cup races were one-sided.

In a stunning performance that ended years of frustration for Coach Terry Donahue, UCLA sailed past Nebraska, 41-28, Saturday night before a crowd of 84,086 at the Rose Bowl and a national television audience.

And it wasn’t that close.

The Bruins opened a 28-0 lead in the first quarter, sending a message not only to Nebraska, but to the rest of the nation.

“I think this victory puts our football program on a different plateau,” said Donahue, who won for the 100th time in his 13-year career. “It removes the stigma that we couldn’t beat Nebraska.”

Against an opponent that had outscored them by 80 points in the teams’ three most recent meetings, the fifth-ranked Bruins dominated the line of scrimmage against the second-ranked Cornhuskers, scoring more points than anyone ever had against a Tom Osborne-coached team.

“We got knocked off the ball,” Osborne said.

Nebraska had been so dominant in beating UCLA, 42-10, in 1983 and again in 1984, 42-3, that Donahue broadly hinted this week the Cornhuskers’ “atypical” strength had been aided by the use of steroids.

Osborne, who was irked by Donahue’s thinly veiled comments, alluded to them in addressing reporters after the game.

“If we had any advantage in the past that wasn’t right, I’m sorry for it,” Osborne said. “We obviously didn’t have an advantage tonight.”

UCLA’s dominance wasn’t reflected in the statistics only because the Bruins mostly sat on the ball in the second half.

Still, the Bruins outgained the Cornhuskers, 438 yards to 385, as quarterback Troy Aikman completed 13 of 22 passes for 205 yards and 3 touchdowns, tailback Eric Ball ran for 148 yards in 35 carries and tight end Charles Arbuckle caught 5 passes for 100 yards and 2 touchdowns.

The first-half statistics painted a clearer picture.

The Bruins averaged more than 9 yards a play in the first two quarters, rolling up 344 total yards while limiting the Cornhuskers to 154, including 84 in a drive at the end of the half after UCLA had gone ahead, 38-7.

“I’m not sure I’ve seen our team play a better half,” Donahue said.

Certainly not against an opponent of this caliber.

Aikman said: “It’s very rare that a team comes out and makes Nebraska look bad.”

In the first quarter, UCLA averaged 12 yards a play.

“It’s one of those things you experience in athletics where everything clicks and everything works,” said Donahue, who added that the Bruins were “nothing short of fabulous” in all phases of the game.

Said Osborne: “It was hard for me to understand. We don’t usually get knocked around like that.”

Nebraska was in a bad way almost from the beginning.

With Aikman completing 11 of 14 passes for 183 yards and 3 touchdowns in the first half, the Bruins scored on 5 of their first 6 possessions--and also got a 75-yard punt return for a touchdown by cornerback Darryl Henley--to take a 38-7 lead.

It was 28-0 after 14 minutes.

Arbuckle took a short pass from Aikman only 2:21 into the game and turned it into a 57-yard touchdown play, breaking free from the grasp of linebacker LeRoy Etienne and sprinting up the middle of the field into the end zone.

Said Aikman: “He should have been tackled for about a 3-yard gain, but he made a big play out of it.”

Said Osborne: “We had a guy there. He just didn’t tackle him.”

After the UCLA defense forced a punt, Aikman handed the next drive over to freshman tailback Shawn Wills, who ran for 19 yards on his first carry, then spun out of the grasp of strong safety Mark Blazek on his second, a spectacular effort that covered 50 yards and gave the Bruins a 14-0 lead.

“It’s a feeling I can’t really explain,” said Wills, who played last season at Hanford High School, about 40 miles south of Fresno. “I felt somebody at the back of me and I thought, ‘Oh, my God.’ But he swerved and just slapped at me.”

Wills, who ran for 73 yards in 4 carries, said he was nervous before the game but “hyped” by the big crowd.

“In Hanford,” he said, “our biggest crowd was 2,000.”

On the next play, UCLA linebacker Carnell Lake grabbed a fumble by Nebraska’s Dana Brinson out of the air, only to fumble himself. However, Marcus Turner fell on the ball for the Bruins at the Nebraska 47-yard line.

It took the Bruins only 7 plays to make it 21-0, Aikman passing 3 yards to Arbuckle for the touchdown.

Three more Nebraska plays netted only 8 yards, forcing a punt by John Kroeker, whose kick was fielded and returned up the left sideline, in front of the UCLA bench, by Henley, who had also returned a punt for a touchdown last week in UCLA’s 59-6 rout of San Diego State.

The Bruin defense continued to throttle the Cornhuskers.

Strong safety Matt Darby, with a running start, leveled Nebraska running back Ken Clark on the next play, knocking Clark out of the game after Clark caught a pass from quarterback Steve Taylor on a play that lost 3 yards.

At least, Clark walked off under his own power.

Two plays later, Darby crunched Brinson, who had to be helped off.

Nebraska’s misery continued when Taylor’s pass was tipped by Bruin tackle Jon Pryor and intercepted by linebacker Marcus Patton.

Aikman then made probably his poorest pass of the game, badly overthrowing flanker Mike Farr.

Blazek intercepted, rolled over as he was hit by a diving Farr, then jumped to his feet, holding the ball aloft as he made his way toward the Nebraska sideline.

Inexplicably, the play was not whistled dead, although college football rules state that a player is considered downed if any part of his body, other than his hands or feet, makes contact with the field.

Blazek, believing that the play was dead, only half-heartedly ran down the sideline into the end zone, completing a bizarre 75-yard return for a touchdown as the UCLA players walked off the field.

“As far as what happened, I caught it (and) I rolled over, I guess,” Blazek said. “I’m sure people are going to say I went down. I can’t remember.

“On that kind of play, you hesitate. Then I started running.”

The officials seemed just as confused as Blazek, waiting a couple of minutes before ruling that Blazek’s touchdown would stand up.

Referee James Sprenger said, “The covering official saw the player go down on one hand but didn’t see another part of his body touch the ground.

“I can’t guess. The only way we could rule was what we knew; no one had blown the play dead and no one saw the player touch the ground. We understand we were wrong. We know we were wrong.

“We reacted to the strangeness of it.”

So did UCLA, in its own way.

Undaunted, Aikman drove the Bruins right back down the field, hitting Arbuckle with passes that covered 10, 7 and 22 yards and keeping the drive alive with a 17-yard pass to split end David Keating on third-and-17 at the UCLA 46-yard line.

Keating later scored on an 11-yard pass play, taking a throw from Aikman at the 1-yard line, spinning out of the grasp of Blazek and cornerback Tahaun Lewis and diving into the end zone to give the Bruins a 35-7 lead.

Alfredo Velasco’s 42-yard field goal made it 38-7 with 3:54 left in the first half and followed an interception of a Taylor pass by Marcus Turner, whose 22-yard return put the Bruins at the Nebraska 48-yard line.

Taylor and the Cornhusker offense finally got untracked at that point, driving 73 yards to a touchdown to make it 38-13 at halftime.

Morgan Gregory scored on an 8-yard touchdown pass from Taylor, outjumping Henley to catch the ball in the back of the end zone. The conversion attempt failed.

The second half remained, but Nebraska was finished.

And UCLA set sail for . . .

A national championship?

“I told the players that if we were ever going to win a national championship, we’d have to beat Nebraska,” Donahue said.

Consider it done.

Bruin Notes

UCLA ended a 4-game losing streak against Nebraska to even the series against the Cornhuskers at 4-4. . . . The last time UCLA beat Nebraska, Richard Nixon was president and Mark Harmon was the UCLA quarterback. Efren Herrera kicked a field goal with 22 seconds left in the 1972 game at the Coliseum, giving the Bruins a 20-17 victory and ending Cornhusker streaks of 23 straight wins and 32 games without a loss. . . . The crowd was the largest ever for a regular-season UCLA game in the Rose Bowl against an opponent other than USC. . . . Terry Donahue’s record is 100-36-7. . . . Representatives of the Orange, Cotton, Fiesta and Freedom bowls attended the game. . . . The 41 points were the most scored against Nebraska since Oklahoma beat the Cornhuskers, 47-0, in 1968. . . . Eric Ball’s 148 rushing yards represented a career high for a regular-season game. Ball ran for 227 yards in the 1986 Rose Bowl. . . . Nebraska is 72-16 since the start of the 1980 season but only 8-5 on natural grass. . . . Erik Toupal Van Fleet of Upland, a native of Omaha, and Suzanne May Snyder, a native of Grand Island, Neb., were married in the stands at halftime. According to invitations sent out by the couple, “tasteful dress” was to include “anything in scarlet and/or cream.”