Miller Making Up for Some Lost Time : UCLA: Bruin receiver had a slow start because of injury, but he is making a big impact now.

UCLA Coach Terry Donahue calls him the team’s best offensive player. Offensive coordinator Homer Smith says he’s outstanding and calls him “Slinky.”

By any name, Bruin flanker Scott Miller is an impact player who can influence a game.

He has played only two games for the Bruins since recovering from a collarbone broken three days into fall practice. Nonetheless, he has quickly made up for lost time. Consider:

--The first time Miller touched the ball after his injury, he returned a punt 47 yards against Washington State to set up a touchdown.

--He caught three touchdown passes Saturday against Arizona at the Rose Bowl on plays of 40, 45 and 32 yards.

--He has made seven catches for 219 yards, an average of 31.3 yards a reception. He is also averaging 25.5 yards a play including his punt returns.

--That average would have been even higher if a 51-yard punt return for a touchdown against Arizona hadn’t been nullified by a clipping penalty.

Some comeback.

“He’s a big-time player,” Donahue said. “He’s a very accomplished wide receiver. I’m not sure he’s not as good as any I’ve had at UCLA. He’s much quicker than people think he is. He has good moves and good running ability after he catches the ball.

“He’s also fiercely competitive and is probably as unselfish as any wide receiver that I’ve been around. He has absolutely no concern for how many passes he catches, or what position he plays. I’m just tremendously impressed.”

Said Smith: “We’ll be watching him play for a long time (in the NFL). What he’s got can’t be measured in conventional measurements such as speed or height. He just has football savvy, and he gets it done in the face of competition. And he’s deceptively fast.”

Why Slinky?

“He just operates alone and is very quiet,” Smith said.

Miller, who stands 5 feet 11 and weighs 177 pounds, is one of the few junior college transfers on the team. He came to UCLA last season after playing at Saddleback College for two years. An accomplished wide receiver at El Toro High School on an unbeaten team in his senior year, he didn’t quite have the grades or the SAT score to go to a four-year school.

Miller, however, doesn’t regret going to Saddleback while his high school teammates, Bret Johnson, Scott Spalding and Cory Wayland went to UCLA immediately.

“It worked out for the best,” Miller said. “It was something I had to do. By going there, I was able to mature and take care of my classes.”

Miller also observed that there are some community college players who are as skilled as ones he has played against while at UCLA.

He said several schools, including USC, Ohio State, Washington and Houston, tried to recruit him at Saddleback, but he chose UCLA for its winning tradition and seven bowl victories in the 1980s. The prospect of being reunited with some of his El Toro teammates also influenced his decision.

Miller caught 23 passes for 414 yards--an 18-yard average--and five touchdowns last year as a junior.

His senior season didn’t get off to an auspicious start, though.

“We were in shorts, and I was just laying out for a ball in practice and came down on my shoulder,” Miller said. “It was the first time I had broken a bone. I’ve landed on that shoulder a million times and didn’t get hurt.”

Donahue said that it takes four to six weeks for a broken collarbone to mend.

Miller was back in five weeks, after missing games against Oklahoma, Stanford and Michigan.

“The hard part of the injury was watching games and practices,” he said. “I wanted to be out there, helping the team out.”

If UCLA had beaten Arizona, Miller would have been the featured player in almost every account of the game. As it was, Bruin mistakes were highlighted.

Here, though, is a recap of his three scoring catches:

No. 1, UCLA, 7-0--Miller said he ran a middle route and as soon as he caught Tommy Maddox’s pass at the Arizona 21-yard line, he was hit by two defensive backs.

“But they didn’t wrap me up,” he said. “If I they had, I would have been down right there.”

Miller angled across the field and was pursued and then tackled by cornerback Darryl Lewis in the end zone.

No. 2, UCLA, 14-7--”It was a play-action pass and Lewis bit down (was fooled) on the fake option,” Miller said. He caught the ball at the Arizona seven-yard line with Lewis in futile pursuit.

No. 3, UCLA, 21-14--”I ran what we call a ‘freedom route,’ just getting open on my own. The play was designed to get a first down on fourth and two.” Instead, it got a touchdown. Lewis was burned again.

Lewis got even, and then some, later when he intercepted Maddox’s pass and ran 70 yards for a touchdown with 50 seconds remaining for the winning touchdown.

Miller is supportive of Maddox, a redshirt freshman, saying: “He’s going to be a great player here. He’ll learn by his mistakes.”

Miller caught passes from Johnson last year, as he had in high school. When Johnson learned that Jim Bonds would be the starting quarterback on the first day of fall practice--before Maddox became No. 1--Johnson left school. He is enrolled at Michigan State.

“I was real surprised,” Miller said. “I had no idea why he wasn’t at an afternoon practice. He didn’t tell me.”

So the El Toro connection was broken. Johnson has to sit out a year before he is eligible to play for the Spartans. And Miller’s season is off to a rousing, if belated, start.