Bruins Become a Threat : College football: After battling pressure during first half against Washington, they are the ones to fear now.

The game had been called a barometer, and the skies over the Rose Bowl were an indication that the pressure was falling. It was about to rain all over UCLA.

Washington held a 15-0 lead against the Bruins, who had run only five plays, and the clouds had gotten darker.

So had the Bruins’ Pacific 10 Conference hopes, which had grown with a victory over Stanford and blowouts of San Diego State and Brigham Young. UCLA was being exposed as a fraud: able to beat the weak Western Athletic Conference and unable to compete in the Pac-10.

“I know one of the things that went through my head was, ‘We’ve got to turn this around or it’s going to be ugly,’ ” quarterback Wayne Cook said.

He proceeded to do that, passing to J.J. Stokes on the final play of the first quarter. Stokes’ spin move sent Reggie Reser sprawling. The 95-yard scoring play was the longest in UCLA history, and it was a sign of things to come in a 39-25 UCLA victory Saturday.

UCLA had taken possession on its 20, one, 12, three and one in the first quarter before Stokes’ touchdown.

By the second half, the sun was shining on the Rose Bowl. Washington’s John Werdel punted out of bounds on the UCLA one, from which the Bruins began a drive.

The Huskies helped with a personal foul penalty, Lawyer Milloy slamming Stokes out of bounds on an incomplete pass. It brought the ball out to the 17, and 11 plays later UCLA had a 21-18 lead, Cook and Stokes providing it on a 22-yard play, one of four Cook-to-Stokes passes for touchdowns. It was their 10th in the last three games and 12th of the season, a UCLA record.

Stokes is tied with San Diego State’s Marshall Faulk for the national scoring lead with 12 points per game.

“(The victory) says that we’re capable of being a real good football team,” Coach Terry Donahue said Sunday. “I still don’t know exactly where we’re at, because whatever unfolds, unfolds over the next five weeks. But it shows that we are capable of playing shoe-to-shoe against good teams, like Nebraska and Washington.

“We played a fired-up Washington team. It was their Rose Bowl, because they’re not going to be in the Rose Bowl for two years.”

The Huskies are under a two-year bowl ban imposed in August by the Pac-10 because of rules violations in their football program.

“This was a big game. It was the first big game that we’ve won in quite some time,” Donahue said. “Every week is a big game, but this was a game that we obviously built up, and so did Washington. We needed a victory like this.

“In the Pac-10, there’s so much pressure because once you’ve lost once, you’re under the gun. You can’t stumble. . . . Our players knew that. They knew if we are to stay alive in the conference race, we had to beat Washington.”

The game’s importance made them tight at the beginning. “You don’t expect situations like that when you’re starting in the first quarter,” safety Marvin Goodwin said of the pressure on the defense during the first three Washington series. “Basically, we had our backs to the wall the whole first half.”

The game’s importance made them euphoric at the end. Even a report that California was losing to Washington State seemed to have little impact, even though it was Cal’s second league loss and removed the Bears’ Rose Bowl tiebreaker with UCLA, 4-2 overall, 2-1 in the conference and 18th in the Associated Press poll.

“I think what we’ve figured is that we just need to keep playing the way we’ve been playing, and if we win ball games (the conference race) will take care of itself,” Cook said. “I don’t think we worry about what teams are going to do (in other games). We really have set goals, and one of the main ones is you worry about yourself. You worry about the team and what you are going to do.”

The Bruins’ next opponent is Oregon State, Saturday in Corvallis. Then comes No. 7 Arizona.

UCLA will be a heavy favorite in Corvallis, but “I’ve taken teams up there and lost before,” Donahue said. “I’ve taken good teams up there and lost. One year, I took an 8-3 team there and lost.”

That was in 1978, when the Bruins lost, 15-13.