GAME DAY : Bruins Jump Into Void : College football: With many starters sitting out opener against Boise State, substitutes are ready to go.

The UCA Brins play Boise State tonight at 6 p.m. in the Rse Bol. Pieces will be missing.

Continuity, for example: The defending Pacific 10 Conference champions open the season with new quarterbacks, new offensive line, new linebackers (for the time being), new defensive backs (ditto), and new attitude for the entire defense.

And, people: UCLA will be inexperienced and without as many as 14 key players, depending on game-time decisions on injuries, resulting in 15 first-time starters--seven on offense, six on defense, the kicker and the punter. Boise State, meanwhile, will be without part of its innocence, taking the field tonight for the first time since the unexpected death of teammate Paul Reyna, the freshman defensive lineman from La Puente.

All the voids will be apparent. The Broncos will have “95” stickers on their helmets in tribute to Reyna. The Bruins will have 17 players who have started no more than once before and 13 players on the two-deep roster who have never even played before, many given battlefield promotions for the first two games. This isn’t a 1999 debut, it’s coming attractions.

Now to see if it’s also trouble.

It will be next week at Ohio State, the second and last game of the penalties from the handicapped-parking scheme. But against Boise State?

Put it this way:

When Dan Hawkins, the Broncos’ assistant head coach, was asked earlier this week how vulnerable UCLA would be against the fourth-place finisher from the Big West last season because of the manpower shortage, he laughed.

“None,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is flip through the pages of that media guide and see who those 2s, 3s and 4s are on the depth chart. To the basic person, they might seem like they have a lot of great players missing, which they do, but there’s a lot of great players that are left.”

To the basic UCLA player and coach, the Bruins are too excited to be overconfident against Boise State, so rare is this opportunity for many of them to have such visible roles. The bad news becomes a positive, temporarily.

Drew Bennett has waited almost four years to start at quarterback, or even play quality minutes, since he was a high school senior in the fall of 1995.

Joey Strycula has waited through three years of special teams play to start at free safety.

Asi Faoa opens at outside linebacker in one of the country’s most famous stadiums some three weeks before attending his first college class.

Even the veterans come with a sense of rejuvenation. Defensive end Kenyon Coleman has been eager to play after a summer of spiritual connections brought him greater focus, and tackle Brian Polak looks forward to the challenge of filling the leadership void on the offensive line after the departures of Andy Meyers, Shawn Stuart and Kris Farris. Freddie Mitchell gets to again try to turn the Rose Bowl lights into one giant personal spotlight after sitting out most of 1998 because of a broken leg.

Look past Boise State?

The Bruins have been too busy looking forward to Boise State.

“I don’t think we’re as vulnerable as maybe you would be or people would think,” Coach Bob Toledo said. “The reason I say that is because we are such a young team, a lot of them are getting their first start and they want to play well. And it’s the first game at home. So I think they’ll be pretty fired up and I think they’ll play pretty well.

“If they’re all veterans, they can maybe overlook somebody. They [the new players] are not overlooking anybody.”

Including themselves.

“They [Boise State] are getting their hopes up because we’re missing players,” linebacker Santi Hall said. “It’s a given that another team, if we’re missing that many starters, they’re going to come in thinking that they’re at an advantage. But we’re going to show them the opposite. We’re going to show them that they are wrong. We’re going to show them that we are ready to play.

“I would say if they’re coming in and thinking that, then they have a problem from the get-go. For us to miss players, that’s no reason for UCLA to come out a little weaker. We might be a little weaker on the depth chart, but overall we’re still coming out as strong UCLA Bruins.

“That’s sort of a motivation. We know that they’re thinking they are going to come in and beat us. We’re playing harder during practice so we can come out and show them, show the world, that we’re ready to play no matter who’s going to be out there on the field.

“This first game will show that even without our starters, how good UCLA really is and how we can bounce back through all the negative situations that have happened in the past. This is our coming-out game, even without our starters. We’re going to show the nation how good UCLA is.”

At least this version of UCLA.

UCLA vs. BOISE ST.

* Time: 6 p.m.

* Site: Rose Bowl

* TV: FSW2

* Radio: KXTA (1150)