Bruin Stakes Lower, but Pressure Is High

Now they get here.

Nine months after missing out on the situation they desperately wanted, UCLA’s Bruins come to Sun Devil Stadium today in a situation they would have preferred to avoid: a short trip to play Arizona State for what could become a big fall. The team of last season that came within 50 seconds of playing here for the national championship--the time remaining in Miami when Edgerrin James scored the winning touchdown--now arrives looking to stay alive for the conference championship.

The Siesta Bowl. The loser, almost certainly eliminated from further Pacific 10 consideration, gets to only dream about what could have been.

The Bruins aren’t used to being in this stadium or this situation. Their first game here since 1995 falls at a critical time in defense of the conference title.

“There’s concern and just a sense of urgency,” UCLA defensive tackle Pete Holland said. “We need to get guys in there that can do the job, and the guys that are in there, they need to know what to do and do it.”

There’s concern and a sense of pressure.

“There’s a little bit of pressure on us, definitely,” Holland said.

That is nothing new to this program, of course. But not like this. And certainly not these players.

UCLA knew pressure last season. But it came from the expectation of success, from the need to win to stay alive in the national championship hunt and even the need to win big to impress the electorate. Today, it’s almost about not losing.

“In this way, it’s a little bit simpler,” Holland said. “Last year, people said, ‘OK, you’ve got to win, but you’ve got to do it by this many touchdowns and you’ve got to look good for the [poll] voters on the East Coast.’ Now, it’s ‘Just win, baby.’ It’s simple and we know it. We just need to go out and execute and play with emotion.”

UCLA knew about playing catch-up in the conference race two years ago, when the season-opening loss at Washington State put the Bruins in pursuit mode. They caught up enough to claim a first-place tie, something Coach Bob Toledo has reminded his team about this week, even though the Cougars got the Rose Bowl berth because of the head-to-head win. But of all the players on the two-deep depth chart today--and three deep at tight end, tailback and quarterback because this game brings changes from the regular lineup--only nine had significant roles in the 1997 comeback.

Arizona State and UCLA are in a similar situation this week, in a virtual Pac-10 elimination game, because of what happened last week in the Bay Area. Both went down in flames, the Sun Devils wasting a 23-14 lead with 12:22 remaining in Berkeley and losing to California at about the same time Stanford was laying waste to the Bruins’ secondary in Palo Alto.

So both are 0-1 in the conference and calling this a must-win game to maintain any realistic hope of winning the title some eight weeks from now. Even in the most unpredictable of Pac-10 seasons--Stanford is off to a 3-0 start, Oregon State is 3-0 overall, though without a league game until today, and Oregon is the lone top-25 representative--that much seems a certainty.

It’s especially true for UCLA because of the Stanford loss. If the Bruins fall today, for example, they would need the Cardinal to lose three times in five tries.

“Crazy things happen, but I would doubt that our conference champion going to the Rose Bowl will be undefeated in the league,” Arizona State Coach Bruce Snyder said.

“The percentages are against it. You look back through the years, it doesn’t happen very often. So we’ve got to believe that the conference champion could have one loss, which we both have.

“I don’t think the conference champion will have two losses. So in terms of going for the championship, this is really a big game, for any team right now that has one loss in league. All of us are in the same boat that way.

“Is it death? No, I don’t think so, unless you’re specifically talking about the Rose Bowl. Then it probably is.”

Said Toledo: “Basically, there’s a bowl game on the line. Whichever team wins, it is still in the hunt, I believe. Whichever losses is out of the Rose Bowl.”

That’s not the only similarity. Both teams will be hoping their starting quarterbacks can make it through today with like injuries (bruised ribs for Sun Devil Ryan Kealy, sore chest muscles for Cory Paus) and uncertain whether their star running backs (Bruin DeShaun Foster and J.R. Redmond) will play at all.