No. 2 UCLA Sets Sights on Finishing Year No. 1 : Donahue Says National Championship Is a Goal, but His Bruins Aren’t There Yet

Now that its Nebraska bugaboo is a thing of the past, UCLA can set its sights on . . .

Cal State Long Beach?

Aim a little higher.

A national championship?

“I definitely think we’ve got a chance,” said quarterback Troy Aikman, who threw for 205 yards and 3 touchdowns last Saturday night in the Bruins’ stunning 41-28 victory over Nebraska.

UCLA, which moved up to No. 2 this week in the Associated Press poll, won its only national championship in 1954.

The last time it was was ranked No. 1 was in 1967, the week before it lost to USC, 21-20.

Twice before in Coach Terry Donahue’s 13 seasons have the Bruins reached No. 2--in 1976, when they were 9-0-1 before losing to USC, 24-14, and in 1980, when they were 6-0 before losing to Arizona, 23-17.

It is generally assumed that Donahue, who naturally puts a greater emphasis on Pacific 10 Conference games than he does on nonconference games, does not place a high priority on winning the national championship.

But Donahue said Monday that the assumption is wrong.

“One of the goals we’ve always had is to win a national championship, but a more immediate goal is to win the conference championship and defeat our cross-town rivals,” he said. “I’ve always felt that if you did those two things, you would then possibly be in position to win a national title.

“And once you get into position to win the national championship, that would be the immediate goal.

“In my mind, we try to win every week that we play. We try to prepare every week like it’s the most important game of the season, but . . . if somebody asks me if the Nebraska game is as important as the (Oct. 1) game up in Washington, the answer is no.”

And beating Nebraska, he said, could have long-range benefits.

“It was an important hurdle for us because if we were to win a national championship, this year or any other year, we had to establish the fact that we could beat a Nebraska, we could beat an Oklahoma, we could beat a Miami.

“We had beaten Miami (in the 1984 Fiesta Bowl), and one stigma that was talked about freely last week was, ‘Gee, your teams don’t play well against Nebraska and Oklahoma.’ That skeleton has been put to rest.

“I think this game took us to a new level--people won’t say those things anymore--and that may be a breakthrough toward a national championship.”

The victory, however, didn’t convince Donahue that the Bruins’ No. 2 ranking is justified.

“I couldn’t tell you, in all fairness, whether this team is even a top 10 team,” he said. “That’s because I don’t think the polls have any meaning until about eight weeks into the season.

Later, however, Donahue said that he voted the Bruins into the top 5 in the United Press International’s poll of coaches, which will be released today. He declined to be more specific as to exactly where he had ranked the Bruins.

“I don’t want to fire anybody up,” he said.

Presumably, that means he ranked UCLA ahead of USC.

Donahue said he sees the Bruins in a different light than he did before the season, when he considered them largely untested.

Still, he pointed out: “This team has not gone on the road and won. To me, that’s the next testing ground for this team: Can it go on the road and win? We’re going to know the answer to that in about three weeks.”

Bruin Notes

UCLA (2-0) will play Cal State Long Beach (0-2) Saturday night at the Rose Bowl. Last week, Long Beach lost at Oregon, 49-0. . . . Top-ranked Miami plays Michigan Saturday at Ann Arbor . . . Nebraska fell to No. 11 in the AP poll. . . . UCLA had a chance to take over the top spot in the polls in 1980 when No. 1-ranked Alabama was upset by Mississippi State, 6-3, on Nov. 1, 1980. UCLA, holding a 17-14 lead, was told of the Alabama result at halftime of a game at Arizona, then squandered the lead in the second half and lost, 23-17.

Quarterback Troy Aikman, on the victory over Nebraska: “We’re still trying to slap ourselves and realize it was only the second game and we’ve still got 10 weeks left.” Aikman, a transfer from Oklahoma, said Nebraska was not as fast as in years past. “We made them look so silly, and that’s unusual,” he said.

Coach Terry Donahue said he pointed to the Nebraska game all summer. “This game ticked me off,” he said. “I wanted to dispel the notion that we were nothing more than a finesse team. I wanted to show that we could be physical.” Donahue praised several individuals for their part in what he called a “Herculian-type” effort against Nebraska, including strong safety Matt Darby, who stunned two Cornhuskers in the first half with big hits. “I’m not sure since the days of Don Rogers and Kenny Easley that we’ve had a safety make two hits like that in a ballgame,” Donahue said. . . . A holding penalty against center Frank Cornish, which nullified a 64-yard first-quarter touchdown run by Eric Ball, was laughingly described by Donahue as “one of the great takedowns I’ve seen. It could have been on Saturday morning TV wrestling.”

Why was freshman tailback Shawn Wills, who carried 4 times in the first half for 73 yards and 1 touchdown, kept on the sideline in the second half? “I asked myself that Sunday,” Donahue said. “That didn’t appear to be very smart. I kind of felt going into the game--and I told him this--that I wanted Eric Ball to prove that he was going to be the tailback. I think it was his second or third carry, and I didn’t think it was an aggressive run. I took him out of the game and told him he knew the ground rules and that he’d better crank it up. And he did.” Ball carried 35 times for a regular-season career-high 148 yards. He had 19 carries for 73 yards in the second half.

Of the controversial ruling by the officials that gave Nebraska a touchdown on a 75-yard interception return by Mark Blazek, who rolled onto his back as he made the interception, Donahue said: “It’s probably a pretty good argument for (the use of) instant replay.”