UCLA: The Best Little Powerhouse in Texas

For three quarters Thursday, UCLA had been out-Bruined.

A defensive touchdown, a safety, a long run, a trick-play score, all part of UCLA’s modus operandi this season, suddenly were weapons turned on the Bruins by Texas A&M.;

For almost a half, there was a rumbling. Maybe R.C. Slocum was right when he fired Bob Toledo at Texas A&M.; Maybe Toledo couldn’t win a Cotton Bowl.

But eventually an eight-play, 71-yard drive ended with a touchdown-scoring reverse of five yards by Ryan Neufeld that gave UCLA a 29-23 victory and brought tears to Toledo’s eyes.

“You can’t work at a place five years and be fired and then play them and not be emotional,” he said.

It also gave the fifth-ranked Bruins (10-2) their 10th consecutive win, Texas A&M; (9-4) its fourth consecutive Cotton Bowl loss and Skip Hicks the T-shirt he couldn’t earn in high school.

“UCLA Texas State Champs,” it read, “Texas” spelled out in the university’s burnt orange, “State” in Houston’s red and “Champs” in the Aggies’ maroon, signifying victories over those schools in the 10-game streak.

“We never got further than the quarterfinals,” Hicks said of Burkburnett High, which turned out in force with some Wichita Falls, Texas, neighbors to watch him rush 31 times for 140 yards and catch three passes for 53 yards and a touchdown.

They helped swell the attendance to about 45,000, announced as 59,215 because that’s how many tickets were sold.

Hicks went over the 100-yard mark on the game-winning drive, taking a pitch five yards to get it started, running the middle for another five, running a sweep to the left for 16 yards and another to the right for 24 to the Texas A&M; five-yard line.

The Aggies were sold on the idea that Hicks would carry the ball to the left from there, which is why they were heading that way when Neufeld went to the right out of his wingback position, gathered in the ball and scored untouched.

It was a play designed to be run against Texas A&M;, but only at the right place, at the right time, and Hicks made sure that happened.

“I heard somebody say, ‘Remember Washington State,’ ” he said to a suggestion that 21 runs before that series might have him fatigued. “I remembered.”

Hicks had stood on the sideline, exhausted, during the decisive series in the season opener at Washington State while the Bruins failed to score the touchdown they needed to win.

The one they needed to be in the Rose Bowl instead of here.

“It wasn’t going to happen again,” Hicks said.

When Hicks wasn’t carrying the ball in the game-winning drive, Cade McNown was throwing it: for five yards to Brian Poli-Dixon and 11 to Jim McElroy en route to a 16-for-29 passing day for 239 yards and two touchdowns, an interception, a 20-yard touchdown run and the game’s most-valuable-offensive-player award.

McNown also quick-kicked for 76 yards.

Neufeld’s score came with 7:05 to play, but “we knew they wouldn’t score any more on us,” Toledo said of the six-point lead. “They had scored on an interception, a safety, a big play and that reverse. They weren’t going to score on us again.”

The Aggies tried to take control early, pounding the ball between the tackles and letting quarterback Branndon Stewart throw it only in times of extreme need. The idea was to keep the ball away from the UCLA offense, and it worked--for almost a half.

By that time, Texas A&M; had a 16-0 lead, in part gleaned from a 64-yard interception return by Brandon Jennings, that actually was an 83-yard play. Dat Nguyen stepped into a UCLA screen pass pattern, Bruin receiver Mike Grieb was knocked down and Nguyen grabbed the ball and headed the other way.

“After I made the play, I saw a receiver coming and pitched it out to a speedster [Jennings], because I’m not that fast,” said Nguyen, a linebacker who finished with a Cotton Bowl-record 20 tackles and the game’s defensive MVP trophy.

Zerek Rollins sacked McNown in the UCLA end zone to make it 9-0, and Dante Hall went up the middle for 74 yards, eluding a ball-stripping try by Larry Atkins for a 16-0 lead.

Yet UCLA wasn’t particularly down.

“A couple of guys were walking around and said, ‘Let’s get a score before halftime,’ ” McNown said. “Some other guys said, ‘Let’s get two scores before halftime.’ We’re a confident football team. We don’t get down on ourselves. We were stopping ourselves with penalties, dropped passes, you name it, we were doing it. We just had to iron out those mistakes and get it going.”

Six weeks without a game showed in the passing game. There were six drops in the first two quarters, and McNown was plainly off the mark.

But with 45 seconds to play in the half and the ball on the Texas A&M; 47, McNown went to work. An interference call on Rich Coady brought an eight-yard gain, but Danny Farmer dropped a pass and McNown was sacked by Roylin Bradley for a loss of three yards.

Farmer caught a pass for 20 yards, but then he dropped another.

On second down, McNown went in a different direction, finding McElroy in the corner of the end zone, behind Sedrick Curry.

Two seconds remained in the half.

“I was very disappointed with that play just before the half,” Slocum said. “We made an error. . . . We should have had better coverage on that. Up until then, we pretty much had control.”

Said Grieb: “It was clutch to get some points on the board before halftime. If we would have gone into halftime being down, 16-0, it would have been a much different situation.”

It was also important in that it was a throw-and-catch play that required perfect timing. The Bruins welcomed back their passing game, but they still had to play defense.

“We knew we had to stop them at the start of the second half and score ourselves,” Toledo said.

That was accomplished when Danjuan Magee sacked Stewart on third down, knocking him out of the game on the first series of the second half, and UCLA came back with a McNown-to-Hicks touchdown pass play covering 41 yards.

Close, but only for a bit because reserve quarterback Randy McCown headed right from the UCLA 43, then pitched to Chris Cole going left for a 43-yard touchdown run and a 23-14 Texas A&M; lead.

“I was too aggressive on the play,” said UCLA defensive end Weldon Forde, who was chasing McCown when Cole took the ball and ran past him. “I didn’t react quickly enough.”

The gadget play was countered by McNown’s touchdown run that climaxed a drive during which he threw to McElroy for 20 yards and Grieb for 12.

All that was left was the winning touchdown drive, and a celebration.

A major celebration.

“It’s one of the biggest thrills of my life,” Toledo said. “This is my first bowl game as a head coach, and to win it like we did makes me very proud.

“I’m going to miss a lot of young men on this team. It gives them the opportunity to go out as winners and it closes a chapter in my book.”