With Bruins Feeling a Little Blue, Players Expecting to See a Lot of Red

With memories of the 1994 game against Wisconsin in their minds, either because players have been apprised of the Red Sea that day or because they were in attendance as spectators or while redshirting, the Bruins appear resolved to walk into the Rose Bowl again today with less fan support than the school from two time zones away.

The $110 tickets no matter the location--a price set by the Tournament of Roses, not UCLA--and the disappointment over being at home instead of Tempe, Ariz., will keep Bruin fans away.

So the Bruin players are ready for a stadium blanketed in red.

“People aren’t fired up about the Rose Bowl,” guard Andy Meyers said. “They’re fired up for the honor, but I think they wanted to travel abroad. Even though we don’t travel well.”

Said linebacker Ryan Nece: “I think that’s going to be something that I’m going to enjoy. To walk out into the stadium and see all that red, or whatever color they’re wearing, is kind of an adrenaline rush. You want to go out there and perform for your fans that are there and show your fans this is your stadium, this is your home, and just go out and win the game.”

Leonard Taylor has his own memories of his team’s last trip to the Rose Bowl.

He watched the game on television as a high school senior in Indianapolis and saw the fan support for the Badgers. It had an impact on his decision to sign with Wisconsin.

“Playing in UCLA’s place and it’s almost all red,” Taylor said this week. “That’s what you want to see if you’re a visiting team.”

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UCLA players have been coming to the defense of embattled defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti.

Most poignant was the comment from cornerback Ryan Roques.

“He’s taking a lot of heat,” Roques said. “I respect him because he’s taking it himself. He’s kind of being like an umbrella for the players, so we don’t have to take it. He’s taking it so the heat doesn’t fall on us and we can focus more on the game.

“I don’t know if he knows that we recognize that or not, but we do. We can see that he’s taking the heat himself to try and keep it off our backs so it doesn’t interfere with our focus on this game.”

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Today’s game marks the final game for the 16-member senior class that Coach Bob Toledo has called the best he has seen, based on leadership, preparation and play.

It’s also the final step for the group that has seen the program rebuild from the 5-6 mark in 1996.

“All of us still remember that 5-6 season,” said safety Larry Atkins, one of the four seniors on defense. “I can remember it like it was yesterday. It wasn’t fun at all. We use that as a motivating factor. We were able to go 10-2 last year and we carried it over to this year and we’re 10-1. That’s been our motivating factor. We never ever want to see that again. We want the freshmen to understand that too.”

And if someone would have said then that the Bruins would be in the Rose Bowl before the end of their careers?

“It would have been kind of like, ‘Yeah, OK,’ especially after that type of year,” Atkins said.

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A win today will give the Bruins 11 victories for the first time. . . . UCLA is 5-6 in the Rose Bowl game. . . . The question for the defense is not only how it will respond to the massive criticism that came in the wake of the Miami game, but how it will do with a rare game against an option team. “It’ll test us some because it’s new,” Aliotti said, adding: “It’s a concern of ours. But we’ve practiced against it and hopefully we’ll be prepared enough to slow it down.”