No More Please, Bruins Stuffed

With three minutes to play Saturday, Bob Toledo had gotten his wish. UCLA was in a shootout with Washington State.

“Unfortunately, we shot ourselves at the end,” said Toledo, a fan but also the Bruin football coach.

And Cade McNown had gotten his wish. He had the ball in his hands with the game on the line.

“I don’t want to leave it up to anybody else,” said McNown, the UCLA quarterback. “That’s not down on anyone. That’s just telling you what I feel about myself.”

But then Mike Price got his wish, with Todd Nelson, Leon Bender and some of their friends playing the Bruins’ blockers, Kris Farris, Chad Sauter, Mike Grieb and Tyrone Pierce, to a stalemate, keeping UCLA’s Jermaine Lewis in his own backfield for a loss and holding onto a 37-34 victory in the season opener for both teams before 26,000.

“That defense was exhausted on that field on that last drive,” said Price, the Washington State coach. “It was fourth and one, and they had to suck it up and stop that powerful running attack that had been getting six yards and a cloud of sand on this field.”

Martin Stadium has an artificial surface, and sand is spread on it to improve traction.

UCLA had slogged through that sand in its comeback after doing a remarkable imitation of last year’s mistake-prone Bruins. They had traveled 91 yards, used 13 plays, taken 5 minutes 50 seconds and came up about 18 inches short.

“Oh, yeah, I could see us winning all the way,” McNown said. “I felt we had the chance we needed. And then it was straight off-tackle, us-against-them, and they stonewalled us. We didn’t get the flow that we needed.”

UCLA had taken its time on the drive, with McNown completing passes of 13, 28, 14, 10 and 10 yards, the last to Lewis, who stretched out toward the goal line but tipped the ball out of his own hands with his knee on the six-inch line.

Fourth and goal.

“We felt it was a good play,” said Toledo, who eschewed a game-tying field goal that could have forced overtime. “When you’re that close to the goal line, you’re not worried about overtime. You’re worried about winning the game at that point.

“We had the play we wanted. We knew where we were. It was the play we were going to call in that situation.”

It wasn’t the player they had planned to run it.

Skip Hicks, who had rushed for a personal-best 190 yards in 27 carries and had tied the school record with four touchdowns, had told coaches he had nothing left after running a sweep to the nine-yard line for a first down, then being dumped for a loss of one yard on the first-down play.

“Skip Hicks was exhausted,” Toledo said. “There was no way he could have carried the ball at the point.”

Hicks took the blame for the loss.

“I didn’t know it was fourth and one,” he said. “When [Lewis] caught the ball I thought, ‘Whew, it’s a first down,’ and I turned around. And then I turned back around and saw them on the goal line and thought, ‘Oh my God. It’s a clutch situation and I need to be in there.’

“I’m not saying Jermaine couldn’t have gotten it done. I would like to have it that the team could say, ‘No matter how tired [Hicks] is, he could get one yard. He could get the job done.’

“I mean, one yard. Just hold your breath and run. I’m so upset at myself for that. I should have been in better shape.”

So should the Bruins.

They had taken a 14-3 lead, the first touchdown coming after a 92-yard run by Hicks to the Washington State two-yard line on the game’s second play. Hicks finished the four-play series with a two-yard scoring run, then added a nine-yard touchdown on the second play of the second quarter.

And UCLA had knocked out Cougar quarterback Ryan Leaf, who was nursing a sore knee that Bruin defensive end Weldon Forde had hit in the first quarter.

But then Leaf returned and took apart the UCLA defense. He stood in the pocket with seeming impunity, and even when pushed, he rolled out, buying enough time to allow his receivers to work on the UCLA defensive backs.

And work they did, scoring four touchdowns in 10:13 of the second quarter to take a 30-14 lead.

Not that the only problems were with the defensive backs.

Leaf completed a 22-yard pass to Love Jefferson on a third-down play on a drive that ended with Michael Black running 17 yards for a touchdown, through an arm-tackle try by nose guard Damon Smith.

When Hicks couldn’t get a yard on third down, a punt set up Washington State on its 43, and on the second play of the series, Leaf hit Nian Taylor over UCLA’s Aaron Roques. The play covered 57 yards and gave the Cougars a 16-14 lead.

Washington State wasn’t through.

A fumbled snap on a third-and-one quarterback sneak was snatched out of the air by Dorian Boose, whose run set up Washington State on the Bruin 19. Leaf didn’t fumble the snap on his quarterback sneak for the touchdown that made it 23-14.

When Boose blocked a Chris Sailer punt from the Washington 33, and Bob Meier picked it out of the air and returned it to the UCLA 22, 1:21 remained in the first half.

Leaf found Taylor over the middle, ahead of Damian Allen on a 29-yard touchdown hookup. Fifty-four seconds remained and it was 30-14.

It had all looked so familiar: the mistakes, the big plays going both ways but not in balance and the special teams breakdown. It was 1996 all over again.

“We made way too many errors,” Toledo said. “The kicking game hurt us a little bit. But you’ve got to give Leaf a lot of credit. He did a fine job of hanging in there and throwing the ball.”

Leaf completed 17 of 32 passes for 381 yards and three touchdowns.

The final one came in the third quarter, after UCLA had forced a fumble on the kickoff and Hicks finished an 18-yard drive with a two-yard touchdown, his third.

It was 30-21, and momentum was going the Bruins’ way.

And then it wasn’t.

Leaf found Chris Jackson open over the middle and hit him with a quick pass on third-and-eight from the Washington State 22.

Allen missed a tackle. So did Brian Willmer, and there wasn’t anyone else between Jackson and the goal line and a 37-21 lead.

McNown found Danny Farmer for a touchdown, then handed to Hicks for another, setting up a scenario in which everybody got his wish.

Sort of.

“I feel sick to my stomach,” said a sore and tired McNown, who was nursing cuts and artificial-surface welts. “I can’t even believe it happened. I’m like wanting to wake up right now. It doesn’t seem right.

“We got what we wanted. We just didn’t beat them. It could have been they had one guy weak, but they didn’t and we didn’t. The line of scrimmage didn’t go anywhere.

“Skip would have a tough time getting through that as well, because there’s no daylight.”

Instead, there’s darkness, with a 0-1 start and Tennessee ahead next Saturday in the Rose Bowl.

* DUEL IN THE SUN

Ryan Leaf’s complete game was better than Cade McNown’s strong second-half effort. C6