Cook, Miller Propel UCLA to Rout of Brigham Young : College football: Quarterback ties school record with four touchdown passes and linebacker has 4 1/2 sacks in 68-14 victory.

John Walsh was wrong, and he’s sore this morning because of it.

“I don’t feel like I’m a target,” Walsh said as UCLA-Brigham Young week began, but when it ended Saturday night in the Rose Bowl, he had everything but colorful, concentric rings around the No. 7 on his jersey.

UCLA sent its defense after Walsh, BYU’s quarterback, on virtually every down, and linebacker Jamir Miller continued in what seems to be his life’s work, making Walsh miserable in a 68-14 rout before 50,713.

It was BYU’s worst defeat. It was Walsh’s most trying night.

With 4 1/2 of UCLA’s 10 sacks of Walsh, Miller has 8 1/2 this season and 11 1/2 against Walsh in a rivalry that dates to the 1991 Shrine All-Star game after their senior years in high school. It includes three sacks last season in Provo.

Walsh was sacked on his first passing attempt and hit twice on the opening series. When it became apparent early that 19th-ranked BYU’s offensive line was going to have trouble protecting Walsh, he dropped back into a shotgun formation in self-defense.

He tried quick slant passes.

Nothing helped.

He was sacked at least once on every series in the first half, save two--one a truncated effort that ended on Jamal Willis’ fumble on the first play and the other including three consecutive incomplete passes, two forced when linebacker Donovan Gallatin was in his face.

“He’s a strong-armed quarterback, and we had to not give him a chance to pick our defense apart,” said Miller, who missed practice Wednesday and Thursday because of flu and said Saturday he was “drained” on third-down plays. “The thing we had to worry about was his elusiveness. He can slip through a tackle and complete a 20-yard pass.”

Not on Saturday.

By evening’s end, an interception of a Walsh pass had been returned for a touchdown, another for 17 yards and still another was brought back 99 yards to the BYU one-yard line. He had lost one fumble and finished 19 of 36 for 222 yards in a homecoming of sorts. Walsh is from Torrance.

“We tried to run the football, and they even took that away from us,” Lavell Edwards, BYU’s coach, said.

BYU (4-1) finished with 25 yards in 36 carries, including the sacks.

Walsh’s counterpart, Wayne Cook, finished his evening with a virtually clean jersey and a share of a UCLA record for touchdown passes in a game: four.

“We capitalized on every turnover BYU gave us in the first quarter,” Bruin Coach Terry Donahue said. “But in my wildest dreams, I never thought we could score 68 points. We started slowly, with Wayne Cook making two mental errors in the first six plays, and we got two field goals. If you told me then we would score 68 points, I would have mortgaged my house.”

Cook threw erratically and the Bruins (3-2) got only two Bjorn Merten field goals from first-quarter turnovers.

Then Cook found his stride and took UCLA along with him.

“We came out and scored and our defense held them and we just kept on playing with the killer instinct that this team has now,” Cook said.

As opportunities continued to come in the first quarter, he settled down enough to finish the first half with 170 yards on a 12-for-22 effort. He threw only once more, incomplete, before his work ended when he turned things over to Rob Walker with a 54-7 lead and a bit more than two minutes to play in the third quarter.

Cook showed that his accuracy problems had ended after Paul Guidry’s 18-yard punt return gave UCLA the ball on the Brigham Young 47. Seven plays later, Cook hit J.J. Stokes, who beat Casey Mazzotta and Vic Tarleton on the goal line for a 15-yard touchdown pass and a 13-0 lead.

Cook and Stokes hooked up again on the first play of the second quarter, Stokes beating Patrick Mitchell from 19 yards out for a 20-0 lead. The play came shortly after Gallatin stripped the ball from Walsh on a sack at the BYU 17.

The rout was on.

James Milliner made it 27-0 on a draw play, moving through a gap in the right side of the line and running 35 yards to a touchdown.

It became 33-0 on another Cook-Stokes hookup, this covering three yards over Mitchell with 4:25 to play in the half. It was Cook’s eighth touchdown pass of the season, all to Stokes.

That changed shortly thereafter.

Early in the week, Kevin Jordan had talked about the desire to score his first college touchdown and establish himself as a deep-route alternate to Stokes. Jordan got to do both on a 59-yard connection with Cook.

Jordan beat Mitchell to the ball, then shook off Mitchell’s tackle on the 15, faked and glided into the end zone for a 40-0 lead.

The lead became 40-7 when Walsh completed four of five passes on a 73-yard drive that ended with a 20-yard pass to Anderson as the first half ended.

If the Cougar touchdown and whatever halftime magic could be conjured up had given cause for optimism, that was quelled quickly when UCLA’s Gallatin cut in front of Kalin Hall and intercepted a pass over the middle on BYU’s first series of the third quarter, returning the ball 42 yards for a 47-7 lead.

It became 54-7 one play after Marvin Goodwin cut in front of Anderson in the UCLA end zone, intercepting a third-down pass and sailing 99 yards until Anderson caught him at the one.

Ricky Davis took the final step on the next play.

Derek Ayers ran 83 yards to score with 1:25 to play in the third quarter and finished with 174 yards in five carries.

* TURNABOUT FOR CALIFORNIA: No. 13 Washington rallied from a 20-point deficit to defeat No. 16 California, 24-23. A week earlier, the Golden Bears trailed Oregon, 30-0, before winning, 42-41. C4