Arizona Is No. 1 for No. 1 : Wildcats Get First Shot at Top-Ranked Bruins in Tucson

Reflecting this week on his team’s No. 1 ranking, UCLA Coach Terry Donahue cautioned against getting too excited about the Bruins’ ascension to the top of the polls, which is unprecedented in Donahue’s 13 seasons.

“Six weeks into it doesn’t make the horse race,” Donahue said. “It’s a long race.”

As the poll leader for the first time in 21 years--the Bruins last reached No. 1 in 1967 under former Coach Tommy Prothro--UCLA (6-0) heads into the homestretch today when it plays Arizona (4-2) at Arizona Stadium.

The national championship, it seems, is UCLA’s for the taking.

“It’s ours to win or lose,” Donahue said, smiling at the prospect. “We control our own destiny.”

UCLA’s position, however, is far from secure. Consider:

--UCLA hasn’t opened the season with seven straight victories since 1966. When it moved to No. 1 in 1967, it was 7-0-1.

--Only one team in the last 15 seasons, Alabama’s unbeaten champions of 1979, has maintained its No. 1 ranking through its last five games of the regular season and through the bowl season.

And that’s the task facing UCLA, starting today against a team that knocked USC from the top of the polls in 1981, beating the Trojans, 13-10, at the Coliseum.

Only a year before, at Tucson, the Wildcats had prevented UCLA from taking over as the nation’s top-ranked team, upsetting the second-ranked Bruins, 23-17, on the same day top-ranked Alabama lost to Mississippi State, 6-3.

An unbeaten Bruin team featuring Tom Ramsey and Freeman McNeil fumbled its chance at No. 1, squandering a 17-14 halftime lead against a team with a 2-4 record.

Donahue said this week that he had not alerted the Bruins to Alabama’s loss that day at halftime because he wasn’t aware of it until after UCLA had returned to the field for the second half.

At the time, though, Donahue said he had told the Bruins. In fact, he even speculated the next week that his ploy might have backfired.

“That may have been the way it went, but I don’t recall it that way,” said Donahue when asked about the discrepancy. “When you lose, you tend to forget. When you win, you tend to remember.”

Donahue hopes to take home pleasant memories of today’s game.

The Bruins, he said, are better prepared to handle the challenge of being No. 1 because they’ve had a week to think about it, having moved up from No. 2 after formerly top-ranked Miami lost last week to Notre Dame, 31-30.

In 1980, the Bruins had all of 30 minutes to weigh the effects.

Still, this is unfamiliar territory for UCLA, and Donahue is not quite sure what to make of it.

“Some people would say that (facing the team with) the No. 1 ranking adds to another team’s emotion and adds to the thrill of beating them, and I think probably it does, to some degree,” he said. “But how much? I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.”

He’ll probably learn from the Wildcats, who are 2-1 in the Pacific 10 Conference and will be all but eliminated from the Rose Bowl race with another defeat.

Arizona’s losses were to Oklahoma, 28-10, and to USC, 38-15.

Last week, in a 45-28 victory over Washington State, the Wildcats rallied from a 28-23 fourth-quarter deficit and limited the Cougars’ nation-leading offense to 388 yards, almost 200 fewer than its average.

Coach Dick Tomey called it the Wildcats’ best game of the season.

Arizona, which blends the wishbone and run-and-shoot offenses, ranks first in the Pac-10 in rushing and last in passing. Ronald Veal and Bobby Watters have alternated at quarterback, but last week Veal completed 10 of 18 passes for 172 yards and ran for 70 yards and 4 touchdowns, including 3 in the fourth quarter.

Veal is expected to start.

“Arizona takes the extremes in the running game and the extremes in the passing game and blends them together into an intriguing offense,” Donahue told Arizona reporters this week. “I might be in that offense myself if I weren’t in L.A.”

By that, Donahue seemed to imply that he and the Bruins are under a microscope in Los Angeles.

As they will soon find out, the focus of that microscope has widened considerably.

Bruin Notes

USC moved to No. 1 in the second week of the 1972 season and maintained its ranking through a 42-17 rout of Ohio State in the 1973 Rose Bowl game. . . . Said Arizona Coach Dick Tomey: “UCLA has more quality running backs than anyone in the country.” . . . UCLA is listed as a 10-point favorite.

Arizona’s center, Joe Tofflemire, is a 2-time All-American, but UCLA nose guard Jim Wahler is not particularly impressed with the 6-foot 3-inch, 262-pound senior. In an interview 2 weeks ago, Wahler said: “Joe’s good, but when I played against him as a redshirt freshman, I had 15 tackles. I kicked his . . . “ Indeed, Wahler made a career-high 15 tackles in UCLA’s 24-19 victory over Arizona in 1985. Asked about Andy Sinclair, Stanford’s highly regarded center, Wahler rolled his eyes. Overrated? “Slightly,” he said, sarcastically.

Quarterback Troy Aikman threw for a season-high 322 yards last week in UCLA’s 38-21 victory over California, all but 8 of them in the first 3 quarters. . . . Aikman also ran for 30 yards at Berkeley, matching his UCLA high, which he established last season against the Bears. As a sophomore at Oklahoma in 1985, Aikman ran for a career-high 34 yards in 13 carries in a 13-7 victory over Minnesota.