Huard Is Most Efficient

Webster’s has its definition for efficiency, and the NCAA has its own, and, predictably, quantifies it.

Brock Huard simply says it’s no more than doing what he’s told to do.

“It’s executing the game plan,” says Huard, who will be trying to do that today as Washington’s quarterback against UCLA.

“Numbers are a part of that. If you execute the game plan, if you’re efficient, the team does well. If the team does well, I’m efficient.”

Huard, a sophomore, has completed 103 of 171 passes for 1,586 yards and 18 touchdowns, with only three interceptions.

The NCAA’s statistics take all of that into account in determining Huard’s efficiency rating: 169.4. Nobody in the country has one higher.

His Bruin counterpart, Cade McNown, is fifth at 161.7. He has completed 142 of 236 passes for 2,344 yards and 16 touchdowns, with five interceptions.

They have been something of an entry since their high school days, Huard at Puyallup in Washington, McNown at West Linn in Oregon. When they were being recruited, it came down to Washington and UCLA, and Huard chose the Huskies, so McNown chose UCLA.

And they are friends. They got together at an Athletes in Action camp in Santa Barbara last winter.

*

The Washington-UCLA series is tied, 27-27-2. . . . Two things that tell Husky Coach Jim Lambright that UCLA is a better team this season than the one that lost to Washington last year, 41-21: “40.6 points a game in productivity on offense, and their turnover rate [2.0] on defense.” . . . At a dinner last year in Dallas, not long after Bob Toledo had been hired as UCLA’s coach, Lambright recommended Rocky Long to him as an assistant. Long is UCLA’s defensive coordinator. . . . Officials expect 75,000 for the game. Shuttles from the parking lot at the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and Walnut Street will begin running four hours before game time.