Bruins’ Season of Ruins Could Be Saved With 6 Wins

The flame flickers in the wind, but there still is light.

The pulse fades, but there still is life.

UCLA still has hope. Amid the wreckage of a 3-5 record and a last-place conference standing at 1-4, UCLA still has hope for a winning season and a bowl bid, which are joined by the rules as a package deal, not to mention a realistic goal.

The Bruins need six victories to be eligible for a third consecutive postseason invitation. They have three games remaining. The lack of a Pacific 10 Conference powerhouse means they could win all three. The lack of a running game, a consistent passing game, and a trustworthy defense means they could lose all three. Such is the parody of the Pac-10 this season.

That makes tonight’s game against Arizona at the Rose Bowl the last stand of the fall. Win and stay alive, even if they have already been left for dead by many. Lose and be down to one goal, beating USC, and having to wait until Nov. 20 for that.

“That’s why I’ve really tried to focus on this football game, because I know we’ve got a bye next week and we can kind of regroup and all those things,” Coach Bob Toledo said. “We need to somehow try to win this football game.”

For the first time in the four seasons of the Toledo era, UCLA is desperate to reach a bowl game. There were no such worries in 1996, the team that was little threat and had to win two of the last three to reach 5-6, or through the 10-2 finishes of the last two seasons. Then, it was only a matter of which bowl.

Now, it is about any bowl, most likely the Christmas Day doubleheader in Honolulu that will include the fourth- and fifth-place teams from the Pac-10. Armed with that as possible motivation, Toledo has decided to use it for . . .

Absolutely nothing.

“Not this week,” he said. “I have the last few weeks.”

And why not this week?

“Because I’ve talked about it and it hasn’t worked.”

It really hasn’t worked. The last two games have resulted in the Bruins being shut out for the first time in five years or 60 games, and then giving up their most points in 29 years.

In place of the long-term motivation, relatively speaking, goes the inspiration of trying to win tonight. Maybe because getting the Bruins to focus on the present instead of what may be will help a young team not used to pennant-drive focus. Or maybe just because even that would be a huge boost to depleted morale.

“I hope everybody’s going to look at it as an opportunity to take out frustration on all the losses that we’ve had so far,” quarterback Cory Paus said. “I hope we can all look at it like that. That’s all I can hope for. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

“We could go out and play hard and kick butt. Or we could go out and do the same thing we’ve done the last two games.”

Lose badly.

Lose horribly.

“I know that they’re disappointed in what happened the last couple weeks,” said Arizona Coach Dick Tomey, a Bruin assistant in the 1970s. “They’re coming back home and I’m sure that their resolve will be tremendous. We have to certainly hope that ours is as well. UCLA’s players have a lot of pride, they have an outstanding program, and I’m sure that will be reflected in the way that they play.”

Indeed, easily forgotten is that the Bruins still have a shot at a bowl. Losing, 55-7, to what was then the last-place team--and an Oregon State team that went much of the way without its top offensive weapon because of injury--tends to do that.

They need to beat Arizona, Washington on Nov. 13 at the Rose Bowl and USC a week later at the Coliseum, all the while sorting through the infinite mathematical possibilities.

Think it was tough wading through the Bowl Championship Series calculations a year ago at this time? Try putting that calculus PhD to use to gauge Bruin chances to climb to at least fifth place when there is a two-way tie for second at 3-1, a three-way tie for fourth and a three-way tie for seventh at 1-3.

Arizona, the preseason favorite, is among the three in fourth place at 2-2. The Wildcats are 5-3 overall, but must get to seven wins for a winning record and a bowl invitation because they have 12 regular-season games. That means they need at least two victories from among the final contests against UCLA, Washington, at Oregon State and at Arizona State.