Williams Puts His Signature on Victory : UCLA: Making first start of the season, tailback rushes for 210 yards.

Never have so many been so glad to go to El Paso. As the sun went down Saturday, UCLA happily found itself bound for the Hancock Bowl and also found a tailback who got ready for the wide open spaces of Texas by running wide open most of the day against Oregon.

It was Kevin Williams’ coming-out party in the Bruins’ 16-7 victory over the Ducks at the Rose Bowl, where there unfolded a simple but effective Bruin game plan--saddle up Williams and see how far he would take them.

Next week, it will be the Coliseum, where UCLA will end its regular season with its annual bash against USC, then on to El Paso for the Bruins’ first bowl game in three years, a Dec. 31 date with Illinois.

Starting for the first time at UCLA, Williams rushed for 210 yards in 30 carries to rescue the Bruins from a somnolent performance, which actually had a two-fold effect.

Williams not only eased the heart palpitations among the Hancock Bowl representatives, but also sent the Bruins into their game against USC on a merry note.

Although the Bruins didn’t exactly knock the Ducks off their webbed feet with a dominating performance, at least they won.

Or, as offensive coordinator Homer Smith put it: “In the best sense of the word, we have potential now.”

Leading by only 6-0 at halftime, it appeared that the Bruins might be guilty of looking ahead to USC. The UCLA marching band’s show was a parody of the USC band, which seemed appropriate at the time since until then, UCLA was doing a fairly bad impression of a bowl team.

But Williams, composed of equal parts speed, power and potential, came up with UCLA’s biggest single-game rushing total in four years.

Afterward, he acknowledged being nervous before his first start and claimed he had no idea how he had done.

“I don’t know how many yards I ended up with,” Williams said in the interview room.

You still don’t?

“Does anybody know?”

Yes, 210 yards.

“Really?”

Really.

“Well, I’ll feel pretty good tomorrow,” Williams said. “Right now, I’m kind of tired.”

Maybe, but Williams sure didn’t look tired when he burst through the middle of the line in the fourth quarter and took off for an apparent 79-yard touchdown run.

Williams had slowed at the 10 and turned around to take a look at the two defenders trailing him, but a clipping penalty was called, so Williams had to settle for a 49-yard gain.

So what was he looking at?

“You got to look around to see if anybody was coming,” Williams said. “You got to see if you can choke it off a little bit. That was a long run. I got really tired.”

A 6-1 1/2, 200-pound junior from Spring, Tex., Williams has come a long way from preseason, when Coach Terry Donahue didn’t feel he could even list him among his top tailbacks because of the injuries Williams always seemed to get.

But there was nothing to slow Williams on Saturday. “All of his best football could still be ahead of him,” Smith said.

“He’s got that deceptive speed. It’s deceptive because his body doesn’t look like he’s moving faster, he’s just grabbing bigger chunks of green and the picture the tacklers get is still the same.”

The picture Oregon’s tacklers got was the back of No. 20 running the other direction.