McNown, McElroy, McWin

With 5 minutes 49 seconds to play in the third quarter Saturday, Cade McNown found redemption in the end zone.

With 7:51 to play in the game, he found euphoria there.

McNown came home to Oregon to play his worst game in weeks and his best game in weeks in passing for 248 yards and a touchdown to lead 18th-ranked UCLA to a 39-31 victory over Oregon.

His worst, in that he fumbled when he was sacked by Brandon McLemore, with Michael Fletcher recovering on the UCLA 14 and running the ball in to give the Ducks a 21-10 lead in the first quarter.

It was the Bruins’ first turnover since their second game of the season, a loss to Tennessee.

McNown’s worst, in that he threw an interception to Eric Edwards on the Oregon two-yard-line on UCLA’s first possession of the second half.

He had thrown 116 passes in a row without one and admitted, “Sometimes when you’re on a streak without throwing an interception, you start to take some chances.”

His best, in that he connected with Jim McElroy on a 40-yard touchdown pass play in the third quarter and scored on a quarterback sneak in the fourth to lead the Bruins (4-2, 2-1 in the Pacific 10) to a come-from-behind victory for the first time in three tries.

And he did it largely without his chief ground weapon: tailback Skip Hicks, who rushed for 90 yards, but bruised a shinbone while running past Fletcher and over Jaiya Figueras on an 11-yard touchdown in the first quarter.

It was Hicks’ 16th touchdown of the year. He has scored in 14 consecutive games but did not play in the second half Saturday.

And, for a large part of the game, McNown was without his main deep threat, McElroy, who was hit so hard by Edwards on his first reception that his head bounced on the artificial turf of Autzen Stadium and he spent most of the first 30 minutes wondering why he was in Oregon.

“He did a nice job,” Coach Bob Toledo said of McNown. “He threw the one interception, but hey, when you throw the ball you’re going to get some interceptions. That’s going to happen. You’re not going to go a season without some turnovers, and we turned the ball over a couple of times tonight, but, hey, we won the ballgame.”

In the end, the key was the third-quarter play to McElroy.

The Bruins were down, 24-20, after a first-quarter Oregon blitzkrieg, and it didn’t surprise anybody.

“We had talked about this [Friday] night, that we weren’t going to have it as easy as we have had it the last three games,” Toledo said of a three-game winning streak in which UCLA scored 172 points. “We told them that we were going to have to play a 60-minute game sometime, and this might be it.”

It was, and at 39 minutes, McNown sent McElroy up the middle of the field where he found himself virtually alone to haul in a touchdown pass on a 40-yard play for a 27-24 lead.

In the fourth quarter, McNown pushed his way over the top from the one to give the Bruins a 33-24 lead, and two field goals by Chris Sailer--the final one a school-record 56-yarder, his 13th successful kick in a row--gave them a cushion.

Oregon’s attempt at a comeback ended in confusion and disarray.

The Ducks trailed, 33-24, and faced third and eight on their own 22 with 6:58 to play when Coach Mike Bellotti opted to replace starting quarterback Akili Smith with Jason Maas.

The two had split time all season, but Smith’s play early in the game had confounded the UCLA defense and Maas had watched for 53:02 from the sideline.

“He had us on our heels in the first quarter,” Rocky Long, the Bruin defensive coordinator, said of Smith.

Smith was cooling his heels on the bench at crunch time when Oregon coaches decided Maas was the man to run the Duck two-minute drill.

His first two-minute try lasted two seconds, because he immediately threw an interception to UCLA’s Jason Nevadomsky on the Oregon 22.

“I take the blame for that,” said Bellotti, who said he had planned to play Maas in the second quarter but didn’t because Smith was leading the offense effectively. “We had planned to use him on that play, but he wasn’t warmed up enough.”

He later warmed up enough to throw a nine-yard screen pass to A.J. Jelks for the game’s final points.

The game had begun like the stock market, with points traded back and forth and defense taking a beating.

Sailer kicked the first of his four field goals for an early lead, countered by Smith’s 13-yard touchdown. UCLA answered with Hicks’ run, but Saladin McCullough--to whom Hicks said after the game, “see you on Sundays next year”--sprinted 71 yards up the middle for a 14-10 lead a minute later.

That became 21-10 when Fletcher returned McNown’s fumble for a score.

“I went the wrong way,” McNown said. “We were calling plays at the line in one direction and then changing it to the other direction, and I came up with the ball and just blanked so badly that I made a bad play worse. I’ll take 100% responsibility for that.”

The adjustments began to pay off in the second quarter, when UCLA finally got to Smith on a third-down play for a 10-yard loss, to the Bruin 19, then caught a break when Joshua Smith’s field-goal try was wide.

Akili Smith completed 16 of 23 passes for 159 yards, but in the second half, he “began to think run first and pass second,” Bellotti said.

He ran the ball 14 times, including scrambles, for 67 yards.

In the end, Oregon (3-3, 1-3) was hurt by a UCLA running game that rolled up 265 yards, 175 by somebody other than Hicks. And by McNown, whose return home ended in triumph for the second year in a row.

“It’s not that big a deal,” he said. “I have more family and friends here, but it’s a win. That’s the main thing, not that it happened in Oregon.”