How Two Promising Seasons Became. . . : Lost Causes

Where to begin?

Tracing the unraveling of the UCLA football team means going back in time. Before the 55-7 loss to Oregon State at the end of October, and Delvon Flowers’ touchdown run in the loss to Arizona State at the start of October, and even before Troy Walters’ 278 receiving yards in the loss to Stanford in September.

The Bruins are living the repercussons of last season and of last off-season. That’s when the downfall--at least temporarily halted by Saturday’s emotional overtime victory over conference-leading Washington--really began.

It is a conclusion they have reached only after soul searching was prompted by six losses in 10 games and separate offensive and defensive collapses the likes of which haven’t been seen in years, or even decades. They are now forced to consider the roots of the problems that could still result in a tie for last place in the same conference they went undefeated in a year ago.

That the factors come from the past either makes what has transpired more predictable or more maddening. The issues are intertwined and suggest that the Bruins should have seen this coming and somehow altered the course--or that 4-6 overall and 2-5 in conference isn’t such a surprise after all. Not when the issues are so central as emotional stability and physical ability.

The lack of blowouts last season, even during a 10-2 campaign that included the latter half of the school-record 20-game winning streak, prohibited them from getting end-of-game experience for the younger players who would inherit prominent roles in 1999. And when the two losses finally did come, at the end of the season, it showed chemistry problems that were explained away at the time as products of frustrating defeats but have since been shown to be an absence of inner-peace that was never fully resolved.

The handicapped-parking scandal took care of that. Coach Bob Toledo said it also contributed to the injury problem that has since engulfed the Bruins, noting that everyone else practiced more than usual at the start of the season while 10 players served suspensions and worked only with the scout team. But in time, the internal problem proved much greater.

As one player said recently: “The chemistry was there. It just wasn’t as strong as it should be.”

Lengthy conversations between players and coaches during the bye week, before the win over Washington, confirmed that. Some of the suspended players spent much of the season struggling to find their standing on the team--not on the depth chart. Some were never able to recapture leadership skills that had been there before, perhaps because of the strain of being public outcasts. Meanwhile, some players who did nothing wrong but were still getting abused by fans and bands at road games found themselves unable to fully forgive and forget.

The suspensions lasted two games. The actual penalties lasted all season.

“It never really left you,” said linebacker Ryan Nece, one of the 10 disciplined. “Even though I tried, I can say it stayed with me a lot longer than I expected.

“There were a lot of things, a lot of adversity that this team went through. I think it’s been in the back of everybody’s minds. . . . When I looked into my teammates’ eyes last year, I always knew we were going to find a way to win. There was that look that we would find a way to get it done. I don’t see that same look this year.”

Said flanker Freddie Mitchell, who did nothing wrong: “They thought that since they got penalized so hard, the season was over. They didn’t want to put in the 100% the rest of the year. They felt that the year was over.”

It was, soon enough. When the losses came, there was little in the way of strong leadership to keep the team together, and even less for the tougher challenge of pulling the team through. On a team loaded with sophomores and freshmen, too many of the veterans were either hurt and putting their energy into coming back or they had their voices clipped by the off-field misdeeds.

Quarterback Cory Paus and defensive end Rusty Williams--both redshirt freshmen--became two of the strongest personalities. Newcomers showing the way, or trying to, is a bad sign.

Newcomers playing, though, was a common sight. For that, at least, the Bruins can blame someone else. Their predecessors from the 1998 team.

That team had great leadership, but also seem to have a love for thrills. So they lived life on the edge, needing to go into the fourth quarter to beat Texas and an undermanned Houston squad and California and to the very end to get by the two who would finish in an eighth-place tie in the conference, Oregon State and Stanford. And that’s not counting the wins that were supposed to be hard-fought, against Arizona and Oregon.

Only one time were the Bruins able to relax, against Washington State. There was a 17-point lead for most of the fourth quarter against USC, but Toledo wasn’t about to take chances that day, especially not since he had been on the same Rose Bowl sideline two years ago when UCLA erased the exact same deficit to beat the Trojans.

Simply, there were few chances for players other than the first wave--the starters and key reserves--to get some playing time. That meant experience for the 1999 team that would have an opening lineup filled with sophomores and freshmen would have to come on the job.

“I think that has a big effect,” Toledo said. “By us scoring a lot of points and the other team scoring a lot of points [last season], we never had a chance to get the younger guys experience. I think that’s showing right now.

“They should be making these mistakes in the last seven or eight minutes of a game [that is a blowout], not the start of a game. That has been a problem.”

So, to be sure, have the injuries, some of which might be related to the extra work from the suspensions and some of which just happened for no reason. If something happening for no reason is possible.