Bruins Accept Guarantee and Put It in a Sack

Alissa Toledo said she heard it from her boyfriend Chip, who heard it from his brother, who lives in the Bay Area.

Alissa told her dad on the way to the airport, and Bob Toledo relayed the information Friday night to the Bruins.

“Coach Toledo told us he had heard that Chad Hutchinson had said in one of the papers up here that he guaranteed a win,” safety Shaun Williams said Saturday after UCLA’s 27-7 victory, its seventh in a row.

“I just kind of took that personal.”

He and the rest of the Bruins took it out on Hutchinson, Stanford’s quarterback, sacking him six times and leaving him bruised and battered.

The story, as far as anyone can tell, is as apocryphal as the tales Tom Lasorda used to tell of the frailties of the 1927 Yankees to fire up the Dodgers, but it didn’t seem to matter.

Hutchinson paid for it by absorbing a beating from a defense that held Stanford (4-4, 2-3 in the Pacific 10) to minus-34 rushing yards, much of that coming from the 31 yards in sacks. The yardage was a UCLA record, eight yards better than when the Bruins manhandled Fresno State in 1993.

“I don’t think it was just our own mistakes,” Hutchinson said. “I thought we were ready for them. They put the heat on.”

He was burned for interceptions by Williams and Wasswa Serwanga, and the Cardinal was torched by Skip Hicks’ 121 yards and three touchdowns.

That it wasn’t worse was largely UCLA’s fault.

The 12th-ranked Bruins (7-2, 5-1) were in third-and-long all day long and into the night, largely because they had 12 penalties for 125 yards. Many were holding calls because the UCLA offensive linemen had their hands full with Stanford’s Kallee Wong.

“It seemed like an awful lot of penalties,” said quarterback Cade McNown, who completed 15 of 28 passes for 205 yards, but threw an interception in the end zone and did not throw a touchdown pass for the first time in five weeks.

“You have to play catch-up, and then a lot of teams know what’s coming. When you’ve got long yardage and only one or two downs to do it, it’s tough.”

It’s easier when you take the ball downfield and score on your first possession. The Bruins went 59 yards in seven plays, the last of which was Hicks’ four-yard run.

And it’s easier when you serve notice right away that your defense is going to take no prisoners.

The Bruins also did that, stopping Anthony Bookman for no gain on Stanford’s first play from scrimmage, and getting a six-yard sack of Hutchinson from Williams and Damon Smith on the second.

It became clear that if the Cardinal was going to move the ball at all, Hutchinson would have to handle the heavy lifting.

“I don’t think they got a chance to establish the running game because they got behind,” said Rocky Long, UCLA’s defensive coordinator. “I don’t think us stopping the run was us so much as them getting away from it.”

Stanford’s running game is Mike Mitchell and Bookman, both of whom had 100 yards in the last three Cardinal victories. On Saturday, Mitchell had five carries for 12 yards, Bookman five carries for seven yards.

“I think every football team tries to stay away from being as one-dimensional as possible,” Cardinal Coach Tyrone Willingham said. “Through the course of the game, we kept coming back to the running game, [but] we were never able to effectively get the running game going.”

That was no real news flash to the UCLA defense, which went after Hutchinson as though he were a keg of beer at a frat party.

“I think that’s probably the best we’ve played since I’ve been at UCLA,” said Long, in his second season. “I thought the players played with more heat and emotion than they’ve played with since the season started. I saw some players playing on the edge tonight, and if you . . . play with that kind of intensity, things do happen.”

Stanford did itself in on the Bruins’ third drive when Donnie Spragan hammered UCLA’s long snapper, Mark Weisman, on a fourth-down punt from the Bruin nine.

A rule was put in to protect the long snapper a year ago, and the penalty was 15 yards and a first down on the 24. Two plays later, McNown found Rodney Lee on a 73-yard pass-and-run to the Stanford one, from which Hicks took care of the touchdown. It was McNown’s longest completion of the season.

Field goals of 26 and 25 yards by Chris Sailer finished the first-half scoring, and the teams engaged in a punt-athon for most of the second half until Hicks completed UCLA’s scoring with a 24-yard run with 1:59 to play.

Enter Todd Husak, a sophomore from St. John Bosco High, who spoiled the Bruins’ shutout by finding DeRonnie Pitts open over Javelin Guidry for a 35-yard touchdown with 42 seconds to play.

“Aw, man, I hated that,” Serwanga said. “We wanted that shutout so bad. We could taste it.”

UCLA last had a shutout in a Pac-10 game in 1987, winning, 49-0, at Stanford.

The victory sends the Bruins into a bye week on a high, with games against Washington and USC ahead.

“They’re big games,” said linebacker Danjuan Magee, a Hutchinson tormentor with 1 1/2 sacks and three tackles for losses totaling 16 yards. “This was a big game, but every time we win, they get bigger.”

It might help if Washington’s Brock Huard will guarantee a Husky victory over UCLA in two weeks in the Rose Bowl.

Or if somebody hears it, whether he says it or not.

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Streakers

UCLA has won seven games in a row. Here are the Bruins’ longest winning streaks during a season:

*--*

Year No. Season, Finish 1946 10 10-1 Lost Rose Bowl 1954 9 9-0 National champ. 1952 8 8-1 Ranked sixth 1955 8 9-2 Lost Rose Bowl 1973 8 9-2 Ranked 12th 1966 7 9-1 Ranked fifth 1988 7 10-2 Won Cotton Bowl 1993 7 8-4 Lost Rose Bowl 1997 7 7-2

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NEXT FOR UCLA

WHO: Washington

WHERE: Rose Bowl

TIME: Nov. 15, TBA

TV: TBA

RADIO: AM 1150

*

Around the Nation

* THE DEVILS, YOU SAY

Arizona State cashed in two fumbles to ruin Washington State’s perfect season. C6

* BULLDOGS BITE

Georgia turned out the lights on Florida’s bid to win a fifth SEC title in a row, 37-17. C7

* CLOSE CALL FOR LIONS

Penn State got a milestone and escaped with a 30-27 victory over Northwestern. C8

BILL PLASCHKE ON UCLA: C2

SPOTLIGHT: C6

TOP 25 AT A GLANCE: C6

SCORES, SUMMARIES: C12-13