Beavers Could Be Cat Tough

When Bob Toledo talks about not playing a cat-and-mouse game today with Oregon State, he isn’t using a cliche about being coy.

It’s more like the cartoon in which Jerry always seems to beat the tomcat.

“It’s like Stanford and Arizona State,” said Toledo, UCLA’s coach. “They didn’t realize how good Oregon State was. It’s like a cat trying to play with a little mouse. They play with them instead of trying to put them away. You can’t play with them, because if you play with them they’ll beat you.”

Oregon State should not beat No. 17 UCLA, 4-2 overall and 2-1 in the Pacific 10, today at the Rose Bowl, but then again, the Beavers shouldn’t have won in 1994, 23-14, and there are still folks around with memories of that game, fond and ill.

One of them is Toledo, then the Bruins’ offensive coordinator. Another is Rocky Long, now UCLA’s defensive coordinator, then in charge of the Beaver defense that shut down the Bruins.

It was Oregon State’s last victory on the road, and it was scored an entire coaching staff ago.

The new coach is Mike Riley, and he was last at the Rose Bowl in November, as offensive coordinator of a USC team that lost to UCLA for the sixth consecutive season.

He comes back with a 3-2 team that is playing on the road for the first time this season, and is trying to overcome what all losing teams have to overcome: a tendency to find ways to lose close games.

The Beavers (3-2, 0-2) lost to Stanford, 27-24, on a last-ditch touchdown drive. They lost to Arizona State, 13-10, when they couldn’t snap the ball from center to quarterback twice in crunch time.

“I don’t know how good we are,” Riley said. “We played Stanford and Arizona State real good football games, but are we good enough to win those games? We haven’t done it yet, so we still have to prove that. I don’t know if we are. We have to do it first, before we can say that.”

To do it, quarterback-tailback-wide receiver Tim Alexander will have to confound the UCLA stoppers.

Alexander, a junior, has already thrown 163 passes, only 11 fewer than he had thrown in three seasons--one of them truncated because of an injury that gave him redshirt status--at Corvallis. He has completed 85, 24 more than he had previously in his career.

He is playing despite an injured right wrist that hampers his gripping the ball.

To take some of the strain off that, he moved to wide receiver last week, and there are tailback plays for him.

When he lines up as a receiver, “they’ll throw him the ball,” Toledo says.

When he lines up at tailback, “he runs the ball,” Toledo says.

“He’s a great athlete. He wears that No. 10, and I’m thinking he’s Kordell Stewart, because they wear those black helmets now. They look like the Steelers coming at you. He can beat you running and he can throw the ball well enough to beat you too.

“You’ve got to stop him. You’ve got to take him away from the offense. They want to get the ball in his hands.”

That has often been done by the Oregon State defense, though it sometimes skips the middle man.

Armon Hatcher returned a pass interception 81 yards for a touchdown against Arizona State.

Brian Rogers returned a fumble recovery 59 yards for a touchdown against San Jose State, and Basheer Elahee returned a pass interception 29 yards for a score against the Spartans.

In all, the Beavers have generated 19 turnovers.

“They’re giving up only 15 points a game and they’ve scored on defense,” Toledo said. “They’ve scored a lot on defense, so yeah, I’m concerned. I see what they did with Stanford and I see what they did with Arizona State, and I’m concerned.

“Some of those other teams they played, you don’t know how to take them, but when you play [Stanford and Arizona State] as well as they played them, you’d better be serious about them. They’re good enough to beat you.”

That remains to be seen, but UCLA can beat itself. It did against Washington State and Tennessee before embarking on a four-game winning streak.

“We can’t lose the football game,” Toledo said, challenging an offense that doesn’t know if it will have injured tailback Skip Hicks to run the ball until he warms up--or finds that he can’t warm up.

“We can’t do anything stupid with the football. It’s kind of like our plan against Arizona. We knew they would struggle moving the ball on us. You don’t want to mess it up offensively against their defense.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NEXT FOR UCLA

Who: Oregon St.

Where: Rose Bowl

When: Today, 3:30 p.m.

TV: Channel 9

Radio: AM 1150