COLLEGE FOOTBALL DAILY REPORT : UCLA : Donahue Would Have Gone for Two

Coach Terry Donahue might not have found the right call to get into the end zone in the closing seconds of Saturday’s 38-31 loss to Oregon, but he has no doubt about what he would have called had tailback Karim Abdul-Jabbar not been stopped inside the one-yard yard.

Donahue said he would have gone for two points on the conversion. No tie for the Bruins.

“Your team had the momentum,” he said. “Your team wants to win and your team isn’t going to be satisfied with a tie. They would feel cheated if you didn’t allow them to go for the win. I felt strongly that our football team wanted to go for two. . . . I felt that the psychological damage that would be inflicted by not going for two would have been so negative that it would have affected the rest of the season.”

*

Quarterback Ryan Fien, who suffered concussions in each of the first two games and sat out the Oregon game, said all the symptoms are gone and he’s not concerned about the chance of another recurrence.

“Both times, I got hit with a helmet flush on the chin, like a boxer getting hit,” he said.

Nor is Fien, who will start Saturday against Washington State, concerned about job stability in light of the performance by freshman quarterback Cade McNown.

“I plan to play even better than I have,” Fien said. “But I have nothing to prove.”

*

When flanker Derek Ayers took a handoff from Abdul-Jabbar Saturday on a reverse and went around the left side on a 29-yard run into the end zone, ahead of him he saw three teammates clearing the way.

“I felt like I was the President in a motorcade with a police escort,” Ayers said.