Aztecs Still Can’t Handle No. 11 UCLA : College football: Bruins shut down SDSU, 35-7, as Lowery shows effects of his back injury.

How many steps backward did No. 21 San Diego State take during a 35-7 hammering by No. 11 UCLA at the Rose Bowl on Saturday?

On the sidelines in the first quarter, quarterback David Lowery practiced handoffs with Marshall Faulk. On the sidelines in the fourth quarter, transplanted center Joe Heinz practiced snapping the ball to new quarterback Tim Gutierrez.

Shouldn’t top-25 teams have handoffs and center snaps mastered? Even with backup centers and quarterbacks?

It was the first time since 1975 that a nationally ranked SDSU team played a nationally ranked opponent. The Aztecs (1-1-1) celebrated in front of a crowd of 51,501 and a network television audience by fumbling (they lost three of four), bumbling (two delay of game penalties) and stumbling (two for 13 on third-down conversions).

UCLA’s defense caused many of SDSU’s woes. Faulk had 118 yards--46 on one carry--but had to work for every inch. The Aztecs finished with only 142 yards rushing--that’s usually a good first half for Faulk alone. UCLA, which has never lost to SDSU, had 471 total yards to the Aztecs’ 264.

“Coaching, players, the training room, the equipment room, we were all atrocious today,” Coach Al Luginbill said. “The whole program was bad.”

Why the training room was included, it was not clear. Trainer Brian Barry and his troops somehow got Lowery in good enough condition to start despite a lower back that was strained severely enough that he missed nearly an entire week’s worth of practices.

But by the end of the afternoon, the two of the bigger questions were these:

--Given his condition and all the missed practice time, should Lowery have started?

--Doesn’t the fact that Lowery did start--and continued to play even when it was obvious the Aztec offense was not clicking--mean SDSU coaches have no faith in Gutierrez, the backup?

Obviously, when Lowery is not 100%, these Aztecs are in trouble. And when a quarterback takes no snaps with the first team in a week, the result is a rusty offense.

“That might have contributed a little,” said Steve Fairchild, SDSU quarterbacks coach. “I’d like to look at the films first.”

Said Lowery: “Basically, what hurt me was no practice all week. I felt good enough to play or else I wouldn’t have been out there.”

If they had it to do over again, would the Aztecs have either started Gutierrez or brought him in before they trailed, 21-0, with 11:02 left in the fourth quarter?

“You’re always going to look back and wonder what he could have done,” Fairchild said.

Said Luginbill: “If you could have guaranteed me that the ball would be handed off right, yeah.”

But, Luginbill added: “(David) is not 100%, we know that. I felt he was the best opportunity our team had to win, so we went with him.”

When Gutierrez did come in, Faulk took a handoff 46 yards for a touchdown on the first play.

Asked if he felt slighted, Gutierrez replied: “It’s kind of weird going into a game thinking you’re going to be starting. I was preparing all week thinking I was going to be starting, and then to be told half an hour before the game (that Lowery was starting) . . . it’s kind of weird.

“Sitting on the sidelines the whole game, it was kind of like I worked all week for nothing.”

Although Lowery did start, it was clear from the beginning that it would be a long afternoon for he and his mates.

“Pain-wise, he was good enough to go,” trainer Barry said. “Sharpness-wise, from not taking reps (in practice), he was probably off. It affected his game.”

He wore a big, bulky “lumbar belt”--Barry insisted it was not a brace but a device to absorb hits--around his lower back and acknowledged it inhibited his movement.

“Yeah, but I’m not making excuses,” he said. “It was pretty big. I had to cut my shirt off.”

Things went wrong immediately. With UCLA (3-0) already ahead, 7-0, on a 32-yard Daron Washington run, Lowery and Faulk missed the connection on SDSU’s second play from scrimmage. An attempted handoff landed on the grass and, one play later, UCLA’s Kevin Williams ran 25 yards for a second UCLA touchdown with the game less than four minutes old.

SDSU’s second possession also ended with a fumble when Faulk apparently didn’t have a firm hold on another Lowery handoff.

“We just didn’t work on it,” Faulk said, alluding to handoffs and Lowery’s missed practice time. “(Stuff) happens when you don’t get the opportunity to work on key things.”

Lowery fumbled a snap from Heinz--who moved over from guard when Mike Alexander suffered a foot injury in the first quarter--to end the first quarter, but SDSU recovered.

A third-quarter Lowery pass to Keith Williams on fourth-and-eight from the UCLA 36 was badly underthrown. SDSU was down at the time, 14-0.

Lowery, slow to get up several times and grimacing noticeably, completed only seven of 19 passes for 102 yards. Gutierrez completed three of eight for 40 yards.

The Aztecs converted only one of 11 third-down attempts under Lowery and, by the time the junior quarterback was finally removed early in the fourth quarter, they had yet to score.

It was the first time they had been shut out for three quarters since last year’s UCLA game.

It got worse. After SDSU went for it and failed on Lowery’s fourth-down, third-quarter incomplete pass, UCLA marched 63 yards, capped by a 22-yard Washington run, to make it 21-0.

Faulk finally broke the ice--both personally and for his team--on his 46-yard run with 10:51 left in the third. Until then, Faulk had been held to 54 yards.

He finished with 118 on 23 attempts. He has rushed for 100 or more yards in nine consecutive games.

“UCLA has a great defense,” Faulk said. “They do a lot of things to hurt you and get you out of sync. They did it to us.”

Said UCLA linebacker Jamir Miller: “We were tired of hearing all the hype about Faulk. We weren’t going to let him run rampant on us.”

The Bruins, who had 28 first downs to SDSU’s 11, left the Aztecs even more red-faced after a five-yard touchdown pass from Rob Walker to Sean LaChapelle with 7:14 left in the fourth and an 11-yard pass from Walker to J.J. Stokes, making it 35-7.

The Aztec defense is yielding 436 yards per game.

Suffice it to say that most Aztecs will not be checking the polls tonight to see where they are ranked this week.

“We were looking forward to this game, thinking we can do well, and we come in here and fall flat on our faces and embarrass ourselves,” Heinz said. “We got our asses kicked. We came out and thought we’d show up and win because we were in the top 25.

“That just didn’t happen.”