Marty Holly and Mike DiFonzo have gained...

Marty Holly and Mike DiFonzo have gained in the past two weeks a greater appreciation for how fickle college football is.

DiFonzo, a senior guard from Chatsworth High and Pierce College, plays for Oregon, which lost to California, 42-41, on Oct. 2 in the biggest comeback in Pacific-10 Conference history. Oregon, 3-0 at the time, blew a 30-0 lead in Berkeley.

One week later, Cal was on the receiving end. Holly, a senior running back from Harvard-Westlake, watched his Bears blow a third-quarter 23-3 lead and lose, 24-23, when Washington scored 14 points in the final 2 minutes 6 seconds at Memorial Stadium. Instead of moving to 6-0 and 3-0 in Pac-10 play, Cal experienced how Oregon felt the week before.

Holly (5-foot-11, 210 pounds), who caught five passes for 30 yards and a touchdown, had the ball on his fingertips as Washington tried an onside kick after it had narrowed the margin to 23-17, but he was plowed under by a pack of Huskies as he leaped for the bouncing ball.

“The ball took a wild bounce on the kick, and you have to give credit to the kicker,” Holly said. “There was a mad scramble for the ball after I was hit. It looked like three or four guys had a shot at it.

“Any time you rely on an onside kick to win, it’s like a flip of the coin.”

Washington recovered and marched to victory.

“We can sympathize with Oregon a little more now than before,” Holly said.

DiFonzo, a 6-4, 295-pound returning starter, has seen Oregon’s Rose Bowl hopes jolted by consecutive losses to the Bears and USC (24-13).

“I don’t think there’s a better team in the Pac-10,” he said. “We’re a good program. But against USC, we turned the ball over five times. It’s hard to win when you do that.

“Cal just had lucky plays and, all of sudden--bam, bam, bam--they were scoring. But hey, what goes around, comes around.”

DiFonzo and Holly, now looking at the 1993 season with more discerning eyes, point out that the top two teams in the Pac-10 last year--Washington and Stanford--each had two losses in conference play.

“The Pac-10 schedule is murder and everybody knows it,” Holly said. “You have to plant it in your (mind) that you can win it with two losses. You can’t look ahead against (weaker conference opponents) because you never know how you will match up that day.”

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Checking the fax: San Diego State freshman kicker Peter Holt (Antelope Valley) is third on the team in scoring behind Marshall Faulk and Darnay Scott with 45 points. He is eight for 14 in field-goal attempts and 21 of 22 in extra-point kicks. . . .

Nevada Las Vegas punter Brad Faunce (Hoover/Glendale College) kicked six times for a 49.8 average in Saturday’s 24-18 loss to Cal State Northridge. He also passed for a first down on a fake punt play that was nullified by a penalty. . . .

Oregon senior running back Sean Burwell (Cleveland High), slowed by an ankle injury earlier this year, has six regular-season games to break some school records for a career. Burwell trails Derek Loville by 746 yards in rushing and 765 in all-purpose yards. Burwell needs three catches to break the school record of 101 and 37 more points to exceed the current record of 180.