SPORTS EXTRA / FOOTBALL ‘99: COLLEGE PREVIEW : Bruins Set to Ride New Wave on Defense : Embarrassed by performance last season and inspired by Corso’s comments, UCLA plans to put the stops on opponents.

Mr. Holland’s opinion:

“We felt the disappointment of last year,” said Pete Holland, a UCLA senior and co-captain. “Everyone on the defense, we feel mainly responsible for it.”

And beat up because of it.

And labeled because of it.

And motivated by it.

So help us, Lee Corso.

“You’d be crazy not to say it hurt a lot,” said Kenyon Coleman, a starting defensive end on the same line in which Holland opens at tackle. “Our pride, our ego. Everything.”

That brings the embattled Bruin defense to the new season, when something similar will be at stake: everything.

The defense does not need to dominate, but it needs to be at least respectable to compensate for a team in transition on offense. And just as important, the defenders need it for themselves.

Finishing 99th in the nation in total defense, giving up 432.5 yards a game, will do that to a team. So what that it wasn’t even the worst in the Pacific 10 Conference, that Stanford crashed to 104th. Stanford wasn’t a game away--a quarter away--from playing for a national championship, before surrendering touchdown drives of 80, 87, 70 and 74 yards the final 16:28 to miss the chance. Stanford shouldn’t be expecting Edgerrin James to endow a scholarship, if he had any conscience, what with the impact that one game may have had on his NFL draft status and bank account.

It was that same warm Dec. 5 in the Orange Bowl, that forever-infamous day in which Miami piled up 689 yards and James had 299 on the ground alone, that ESPN’s Corso blasted away at halftime about how UCLA needs to spend more time in the weight room and less on surfboards. Dude! And then the second half came and the defense really crumbled and the Fiesta Bowl hopes disappeared and some members of the offense ripped the defense and, well, suddenly Corso was just another piece of shrapnel.

It wasn’t only that game, of course. The defense has been living with the entire season since, through the eight months of the off-season in which coordinator Nick Aliotti left for Oregon and the people at UCLA helped him pack, through the eight months of jokes. (“The Miami Dolphins had the No Name Defense. The Bruins had the No Game Defense.” Or: “The defense couldn’t stop anyone, except themselves in a handicapped spot.”)

Forgotten were the good times, such as how the defense keyed the victory at California as the offense labored or how safety Larry Atkins was named second-team All-American and linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo made first-team All-Pac-10 and young linebackers Ryan Nece and Tony White showed themselves to be part of the future foundation. Not so forgotten was Corso--when strength and conditioning coach Mike Linn felt players ease up during the off-season weight program, he reminded them of the surfboard comment, then watched the fire return.

By the first week of September, the ’99 defense has become both the beleaguered and the believers. It is confident that things will get better--and not about to forget when things were worse.

“That much embarrassment, it won’t leave you for a long time,” safety Jason Stephens said. “We’ll be talking about last year for as long as I’m here. I know I’ll be thinking about it. That much embarrassment, it stays in your mind for a long time.

“It’ll cause us to work harder. It’ll cause everybody to think about that. The one that sticks out in my head is last year from the Miami game, Lee Corso. On television he said that while everybody else around the country was working hard during the off-season, we were at the beach surfing. That’s totally not true. That’s one thing that sticks out in my head that I know I’m going to use to push me.

“I’m a person that likes to show people up. If people are saying things to me, I just want to prove them wrong. And that’s one thing I want to do. That deal, it isn’t just Lee Corso. Everybody around the nation feels that way, mostly, about West Coast teams. East Coast writers and everything. It’s just we have a lot to prove and I think that people on the team are going to use that.

“For the most part, it [the criticism] was deserved. We played horribly. But the more it came, it was just like, ‘All right, it’s enough. We’ve heard enough. We know.’ But it was all deserved. We played horribly last year.”

Said defensive back Ryan Roques: “We’re working to improve our defense. It’s just like in anything. If someone tells you you’re not good at something, you can’t do this or you can’t do that, the first thing you’re going to do is say, ‘OK, try me. You want to talk all this talk, I’ll show you.’

“We definitely have something to prove. We caught a lot of the blame last year. Everyone loved the UCLA offense. Our offense did really well, and I think our offense will do really well again this year. But we don’t want to be thought of as just an offensive team. We want to be thought of as a defensive team this year. I play defense, I want people to think of this team as a team of good defense.”

Oh, and . . .

“I’ve never surfed in my life. But I’ve been in the weight room a good, long time.”