Hicks Makes a Point in Dramatic Return : College football: UCLA running back leaves injuries and Oregon defense behind on touchdown run.

It wasn’t Willis Reed limping onto the court at Madison Square Garden to inspire the New York Knicks. Or Kirk Gibson limping to home plate to lead the Dodgers.

But for UCLA fans among the crowd of 42,537 at the Rose Bowl on Saturday, it was nearly as dramatic. And as unlikely.

Here was Skip Hicks, who had undergone arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to remove torn cartilage only one month earlier, who had undergone arthroscopic surgery on the other knee in the summer, who had undergone major reconstructive surgery to the left knee in the spring of 1994, trotting onto the field for the first time this season in the third quarter of the game against Oregon.

Hicks’ number came up immediately, with UCLA at its own 48-yard line. Quarterback Cade McNown handed the ball to the junior tailback, who broke through a hole off right guard and raced down the field only to run into Duck defensive back Kenny Wheaton at the 22-yard line.

That was as good a time as any to test those rehabilitated knees.

Hicks and Wheaton collided. When they separated, Wheaton was down and Hicks was on his way to the end zone.

“It felt good,” Hicks said of his run. “The knee felt good. But I didn’t really need to test it by getting hit like that.”

While the crowd was cheering that run and the Bruins were celebrating and Hicks was sighing with relief, nobody was more excited than a law student half a continent away in Chicago.

It’s not that Shannon Knight is a die-hard Bruin fan. She’s a Skip Hicks fan. He is her boyfriend. She’s the one he turned to during this most difficult period of his life. She flew out to be with him for the first surgery this year and supported him by telephone during the second. Only with her did he share his fears that this series of injuries might shatter his dream of playing in the NFL.

“He was frightened about what would happen when they cut the knee open,” Knight said. “I wouldn’t want to be alone for that. I didn’t want him to be alone.”

Hicks’ latest injury came on the second day of fall camp. He caught a pass, was hit in an awkward position and wound up on the operating table.

At first, it was estimated that Hicks would be out for the first half of the season, coming back, in the best-case scenario, next month after the team’s bye week. The Bruins also offered him the option of scrapping this season by red-shirting.

He thought about it. But when starting tailback Karim Abdul-Jabbar was taken out of UCLA’s second game because of a back injury, Hicks’ thinking changed.

He was already ahead of schedule in his comeback. But that’s no surprise. He has always been a quick healer. When he tore a ligament in his left knee long jumping in the spring of 1994, he was back on the football field earlier than the most optimistic predictions, getting two carries in the Bruins’ fifth game of 1994.

This time, with Abdul-Jabbar’s availability uncertain for the Oregon game, Hicks returned to practice last week.

“He’s got a great deal of loyalty to the team,” Knight said. “If he doesn’t come back as soon as possible, he feels he’s letting the team down. I told him, ‘It’s not your fault Karim is hurt.’ ”

Last Thursday night, Hicks called Knight and told her to try to get the game on cable television. He might be in it.

All she could get was the Florida-Tennessee game. But she saw Hicks’ run on a scoring update.

While it may have looked impressive to Knight and all the other spectators, Hicks still has reservations about his comeback.

“It looked like me running,” he said, “but it didn’t feel like me.”

His biggest problem is the brace doctors want him to wear on his left knee for the rest of the season.

“I hate wearing it,” he said. “When I break into the open, I feel the brace catching. It makes me feel like someone is grabbing my leg every time. I just have to block it out of my mind and get my confidence back.”

He still has two games to decide whether to apply for a waiver to redshirt but said he probably won’t unless he has further problems with the knee.

Whatever happens, Knight says the injuries have given Hicks a brighter future.

“I hate that he had to get hurt,” she said. “But I’m glad, in a way, because it has brought him to the point where he realizes football isn’t everything.”

Hicks is now thinking of perhaps pursuing a degree in engineering.

Still, he’s not about to give up his dream of playing in the NFL if he can stay away from injury.

“Before I get done here,” he said, “I’d like to get one whole, good season, 20 to 25 carries a game for 11 or 12 games, and see what I could do.”