Few Can Put UCLA’s Novitsky Down Now : Bruins: The slights of growing up help drive the 6-foot-6, 288-pound lineman to succeed.

It was the fourth play and UCLA and Nebraska were still in the feeling-out stages Saturday when Craig Novitsky got his 288 pounds between Terry Connealy and Skip Hicks.

Executing the key block, Novitsky took Connealy, Nebraska’s nose guard, out of a play that ended 53 yards later, with Hicks dropping the ball in the end zone.

P.S.: The touchdown was disallowed.

P.P.S.: The holding penalty wasn’t against Novitsky.

“I think Lynn Swann said on TV it was,” Novitsky said Monday, still bristling. “The other commentator stood up for me.”

Novitsky, a 6-foot-6 left guard, wears his heart on his sleeve. He remembers the slights of youth and uses them to motivate him as a young adult.

“I’ve always had to deal with people looking down on me,” he says.

“People would make fun of my name or make fun of me because I’m tall. Or of where I lived. It was kind of on the other side of the tracks, in Woodbridge (Va.), and people would say, ‘You live over there. You’re not good enough to be with us.’ ”

Woodbridge is one of several communities from which government workers commute daily to Washington. It is more middle class than poor, but is located in one of the nation’s most affluent counties.

Novitsky takes his motivation and his satisfaction where he finds them.

“That’s why I thought it was the greatest thing when, in my senior year in high school, I started getting some press and made all-state,” he says. “People were coming out of the woodwork, saying, ‘How are you doing? This is my buddy.’

“I would say, ‘Who are you?’ ”

Those who follow UCLA football have no trouble identifying Novitsky, whether they see him at left guard, tackle or even at center. He has played all three for the Bruins and has 36 consecutive starts, every game since the first of his freshman season.

“I’m like the buildings around here,” he says. “I’ve been around here forever.”

In the four seasons--five, counting his redshirt year--Novitsky has progressed from a football player who plays the game by rote, carrying out his assignments by the numbers, to a thinking lineman who understands defenses and adjusts to them.

His development has been methodical, in accordance with a plan that began when he chose UCLA after also visiting USC, Duke, Penn State and Rutgers.

“I figured I would redshirt my first year, then would play as much as I could after that,” he says. “Of course, I didn’t figure on us graduating four seniors and my playing right away after my redshirt year.

“Then, after playing two seasons, I figured I would sort out football and see where it would take me.”

He made a second-team freshman All-American list in his first season, and the decision was no decision at all.

“Football is No. 1 with me now,” he says. “I’ve made some changes in my life. Right now, I’m concentrating on football, to see if I can play at another level. I’d like to, but I don’t have a choice. I can only do the things that can impress the people who have the choice, impress someone who will draft me.”

To that end, he has reduced distractions. Movies are game films of opponents. And the start of classes is still almost two weeks off, so concentration is easier.

“I have some goals in my life that I want to attain, and if I don’t do something right now, I’m not going to attain my football goals,” he says.

He stumbled on what he considers his life’s path against California in UCLA’s season opener, a 27-25 defeat in which he played left guard after spending the spring working at his preferred left tackle spot while Jonathan Ogden put the shot for the track team.

“I didn’t have a very good game in that one,” Novitsky said.

It was better against Nebraska, a 14-13 defeat.

“We play a good opponent in Stanford,” he said of Saturday’s game. “That gives me a chance to show what I can do again.”

He hopes to show what he can do in the NFL, as those who once snubbed him watch on television.

“I may forgive a slight, but I remember it,” Novitsky says.

The memories drive him.