UCLA Defends Itself

The motivation was not simply in front of them Saturday afternoon at the Rose Bowl in the form of Washington State. It was also pointedly in their face the night before. It was in their minds, from last season and last month.

The UCLA Bruins had been challenged, mostly, as it turned out, from within. The Cougars went down easily, 49-17, as Jermaine Lewis and Keith Brown each rushed for two touchdowns, as the No. 4 team in the nation dominated with its most consistent game of the season.

But that wasn’t all. The spirits of Washington State ’97 were buried. The disappointment of Texas, albeit considerably younger and less stinging, was erased.

And that man was silenced. The one who called out the defense, downright threatened to show them up before family and friends, not to mention the more than 67,000 others who happened to be in attendance. The guy who dared the Bruins, all but poking a finger in their chests.

Bob Toledo. Their coach.

“I kind of challenged them,” he said.

Yeah, kind of. All Toledo did the night before, at a team meeting at UCLA’s Pasadena hotel, was tell the unit he would defer the opening kickoff if the Bruins won the coin toss, putting the defense on the field first and in the spotlight. That’s coach-talk for “I’m getting fed up.”

This came after a pair of wins to open the season that included Texas scoring 31 points and Houston 24, the latter piling up 442 yards in offense. It resulted in upheaval in the secondary, the new-look rotation put in place for the Miami game that never took place. That the defense has also been battling injuries--starting linebacker Michael Wiley didn’t play Saturday after spraining an ankle in pregame warmups and starting linebacker Ramogi Huma didn’t play after the second Washington State series because of a hip injury--was of little concern because the lack of sustained intensity was the real issue.

So at 12:35 p.m., UCLA won the coin toss and waved off the opportunity to put its potent offense to immediate use.

“That stuck with us,” free safety Larry Atkins said. “That’s someone coming right to your face and challenging you.”

That’s the idea. The result was Washington State (3-2) scoring only two touchdowns, one in garbage time with 4:22 remaining, and finishing with 314 yards. A commendable showing, even with the reality that the Cougars offered little in the way of an offensive threat to begin with.

Said Toledo: “They really responded to the challenge well.”

There was another one from Washington State. Or at least from the lasting image of Washington State’s 37-34 victory at Pullman in the 1997 season opener, the eventual difference between the Cougars, not the Bruins, playing Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

What transpired before 67,210, as UCLA improved to 3-0 (1-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference) and extended its school-record winning streak to 13, was a moment of individual achievement for Lewis, who doesn’t need reminding but still faces questions about his failed one-yard run a little more than a year ago. He came back with 94 yards in 15 carries, an impressive average of 6.3 per carry that also included scoring runs of five and six yards as the Bruins jumped to a 28-0 lead.

But the impressive showing had meaning for many of the players--the ones who have spent the last months wearing T-shirts that proclaimed “Unfinished Business.” They didn’t see the asterisk, the one that noted how this is a far different Washington State team because of graduation and injury.

“This season,” Lewis said, “we wanted a little payback.”

Added backup tight end Ryan Neufeld: “We talked about that all week. We kept reminding each other, ‘37-34.’ I think that was a big motivation for us.”

So were the events of Sept. 12, the 1998 season opener and the only other home game so far, which only seems like forever ago for the Bruins. They got the commanding win, 49-31, but they also got the heat because of uninspired play in the second half. It didn’t help that the follow-up was the sluggish showing at Houston.

That put targets on Washington State for the whole game. The cancellation of the game against the Hurricanes had UCLA chomping to play, even after it scored the four unanswered touchdowns in the opening 17:22.

The fourth quarter of the game against the Longhorns had UCLA chomping to keep playing. So the Bruins reminded themselves on several occasions during halftime to “Remember Texas,” then went out and pushed the lead to 42-10 late in the third quarter on Cade McNown’s seven-yard lob to Brian Poli-Dixon in the end zone, the only scoring pass for McNown on a day in which he would finish 14 of 27 for 205 yards. In the end, Washington State had fewer yards in the second half than the first, 184-130.

“Our defensive scheme has always been pretty sound,” said Ryan Nece, the backup linebacker who took advantage of the injuries to Huma and Wiley to play a prominent role. “It was pretty much the same [against Washington State]. But the attitude of the defensive players was at an unbelievable level today.”