ROSE BOWL / WISCONSIN BADGERS 21, UCLA BRUINS 16 : Badgers Love Home Cookin’ : Wisconsin Eats Up UCLA’s Turnovers and Holds On, 21-16

UCLA talked some trash, then littered the field with footballs. Wisconsin took out the trash and the Bruins, 21-16, in the 80th Rose Bowl game.

After living by the turnover all season, UCLA died by it Saturday, with a Rose Bowl-record five fumbles and an intercepted pass. Add 95 yards in penalties, and it was really ugly for the Bruins.

In the end, they might have been guilty of believing their own reputation and that of Wisconsin.

“They were talking trash from the warm-ups on,” said Badger wide receiver Lee DeRamus, who was among four players ejected after a third-quarter fight that began after UCLA had stopped a fourth-and-one play on the 10-yard line. “They were saying, ‘We’re going to kick your . . . . ‘We’ll show you how to play physical’ and things like that.”

It was a strange thing to do at a road game.

“We took the approach that it was a home game for us,” Wisconsin Coach Barry Alvarez said. “That’s why we chose that locker room. We walked on the field and I told them, ‘Isn’t Camp Randall painted up great today?’ ”

Enough Wisconsin fans got Southern California’s toughest ticket in years to lend no less than an emotional balance among the 101,237 at the Rose Bowl, UCLA’s home stadium during the regular season. The Badgers wore their home red and, defying tradition, told UCLA they would use the home dressing room at the stadium, sending the Bruins on the road, about 150 feet, to the other corner of the stadium.

That home dressing room made a great place for a celebration.

“It was our fault,” said UCLA quarterback Wayne Cook, whose voice came back Saturday morning after a week of flu and a sore throat. “We didn’t score enough early and take those fans out of the game.”

Cook passed for 288 yards and tried to rally the Bruins in the final minute. But he was tackled at the Wisconsin 15 instead of throwing the ball away with 15 seconds to play and time ran out on UCLA.

The Bruins took a 3-0 lead on Bjorn Merten’s 27-yard field goal that ended a drive in which UCLA was penalized 25 yards, 15 of them for a personal foul when wide receiver J.J. Stokes--who caught 14 balls for 176 yards, both Rose Bowl records--slapped Kenny Gales in the helmet for holding a tackle too long out of bounds.

Wisconsin came back on the running of Brent Moss, the game’s most valuable player with 158 yards in 36 carries. He got three of those on a touchdown run that capped a 78-yard drive that included a pass interference penalty on Teddy Lawrence in the end zone.

It was the Badgers’ longest scoring drive all day. UCLA helped shorten the rest.

“We kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” Cook said. “That’s the bottom line of this game. We had six turnovers, and we beat ourselves.”

Wisconsin had plenty to do with that.

“I can’t explain the turnovers,” UCLA Coach Terry Donahue said. “We lead the country in turnover ratio the whole year, and we get in the biggest game of the year and turn the ball over six times. I believe it’s a combination of their good playing and nervousness on our part that worked against us.”

The problems started in the second quarter, when first the Bruins and then Wisconsin exchanged interceptions--only the fourth of the season thrown by Cook--and UCLA had the ball at its 32-yard line with a third-and-six play.

Cook hit Stokes, who had the first down, but in his haste to get loose from the Badgers’ Jeff Messenger, Stokes got loose from the football. Lamark Shackerford recovered for Wisconsin.

Eight plays later, the Badgers had a 14-3 lead on Moss’ one-yard run.

“As far as I’m concerned, we really played a good second half,” Cook said. “We got the team to where we could win it.”

Or not.

Cook’s fumble when sacked by Wisconsin’s Carlos Fowler cut off UCLA’s second-half-opening drive at the Badger eight. Wisconsin then went the other way until the drive ended on fourth down at the UCLA 10 and was followed by fisticuffs.

Bruin defensive backs Marvin Goodwin and Donovan Gallatin were ejected at 8:16 of the third quarter. Also going to the sideline were Wisconsin’s DeRamus and Mark Montgomery.

Goodwin and DeRamus had been rivals in high school in New Jersey, “but we weren’t that close,” DeRamus said. “We were never as close as we were in that scuffle on the sideline.”

Back UCLA came, from its 10, moving downfield to the Wisconsin 33. Again, Cook faded, being hit by Rob Lurtsema and fumbling, with Henry Searcy recovering.

“It’s going to come back to why we got inside the 30 and didn’t get points,” Donahue said, “and why we got inside our own 30 and gave up points. It’s going to come back to that.”

After Ricky Davis scored on a 12-yard run to cut it to 14-10, it came back to that. Davis fumbled on the UCLA 34, and five plays later Wisconsin quarterback Darrell Bevell scrambled 21 yards for a touchdown and a 21-10 lead.

After another fumble, Cook led UCLA on a 15-play, 90-yard drive. Mike Nguyen’s five-yard reception, his first collegiate touchdown, cut the Bruins’ deficit to 21-16 with 3:38 to play.

It was enough time, given a defensive stand.

It wasn’t enough time, given Brent Moss. He ran five consecutive times, once for a first down, but was stopped short and the Badgers punted the ball away. UCLA had the ball at its 38 with 1:43 to play and no timeouts.

Cook told the Bruin huddle, “We’re going to win it.” He was wrong.

Passes over the middle to Brian Allen and Stokes, a run by Cook and another pass to Allen moved the ball to the Wisconsin 31.

An incomplete pass and a penalty made it third down with 25 seconds to play, and a pass to Stokes for 18 yards put the ball on the Badger 18 with 15 seconds to play.

It wasn’t long enough.

“With 15 seconds to go and no timeouts, a quarterback’s the only person who can pull off the job,” Donahue said. “Wayne faced two options: one, throw the ball into the ground and kill the clock; and two, call for a pass into the end zone. He elected to call the pass in the end zone.”

Cook looked for a receiver and found none. He tried to make something out of nothing, running for three yards and out of time.

“I should have thrown the ball into the ground,” he said. “It was my mistake.”

It ended a game of mistakes and the Bruins’ eight-game bowl winning streak.

It began a celebration, Wisconsin acknowledging its first 10-victory season, first Rose Bowl victory in its first Pasadena appearance in 31 years and the first question of what are you going to do for an encore for Alvarez, who in four seasons has taken the Badgers from 1-10 to the Big Ten championship.

“A victory like this naturally gives our program a lot of credibility,” he said. “I start recruiting Monday. I’ve got three home visits out here . . . and it’s an awful lot better if you win a bowl game when you go into a living room. It gives you credibility and gets you into the living rooms of some of the top players in the country.”