Bruins No Longer Pushovers

When the UCLA Bruins left the football field here, many of them were covered with blood. They seemed tiny, almost, compared to the Wisconsin Badgers.

The Badgers walked off the field with puffed-out chests. But even without the braggadocio, Wisconsin had the bigger, more physical football players.

And the Badgers had expected to beat up the Bruins. They had expected to rush for 200, 300 yards. They had expected to swallow up the sissy Bruins in the first half and spit them out in the second.

It didn’t work that way though.

Yes, Wisconsin won the 2000 Sun Bowl over UCLA. But the final score was 21-20 and the Badgers seemed stunned at how UCLA had fought so hard and so well for so long.

This wasn’t two years ago, when USC came waddling to the Sun Bowl out of shape and uninterested and left, an embarrassed loser to Texas Christian.

The 2000 Sun Bowl Los Angeles representative played with fierce emotion. UCLA got itself a 15-yard taunting penalty before the game started, then earned two more after the game was going good.

UCLA’s starting right cornerback, Jason Bell, went out on the first series with a broken ankle. Bell was hurt on a Badger scoring play. Bell missed a tackle, broke an ankle. Yep, that’s the UCLA defense we all know and love.

But then the Bruins toughened up. Left cornerback Ricky Manning was injured in the second quarter, a concussion that left him groggy well after the end of the game. But the Bruin defense just kept stopping the Badgers. Strong safety Marques Anderson missed significant portions of the game with a bad ankle. Middle linebacker Robert Thomas limped on and off the field with a bad foot.

Still the Bruins hung together.

Wisconsin left guard Bill Ferrario, a 6-foot-3, 314-pound mountain of a man, the kind of mountain UCLA is missing, paid grudging respect to UCLA’s defense.

“Those guys weren’t like the other UCLA teams we played,” Ferrario said. “These guys really went at us all game. We could tell they were getting tired in the fourth quarter but, man, it took long enough to wear them out. I have to give them credit.”

Excuse the Badgers for expecting the UCLA pudding defense. At the 1999 Rose Bowl, Wisconsin defeated UCLA, 38-31, while Ron Dayne gained 246 yards. Wisconsin had upset the Bruins in the 1994 Rose Bowl too. Both times the Badger lines dominated the UCLA lines.

That didn’t happen Friday.

The maligned defense held on until those players couldn’t hold anything but their sides any more.

“Give them credit,” Wisconsin fullback Chad Kuhns said. “We kept waiting for their defense to fold and it almost didn’t.”

UCLA also lost its starting quarterback, Cory Paus, with a broken collarbone. That happened on the last play of the first half and, even more than the defensive injuries, was the reason for the loss. And hurt as he was, Paus desperately wanted to play.

This is the kind of loss that should mean good things for the future. There are only three senior starters on defense for UCLA and two on offense.

We don’t know if crazy wide receiver Freddie Mitchell will come back for his senior year or try the NFL instead, but it would sure be nice if he is playing for the Bruins one more season.

Certainly Mitchell will be ripped for his finger-pointing, hand-waving taunting of Wisconsin All-American cornerback Jamar Fletcher and his not-so-subtle slap in the face of Fletcher, both of which got UCLA 15-yard penalties. But it is that smart-mouthed, hard-nosed attitude that UCLA needs to show. You don’t want opponents expecting you to be showy and soft. Showy and mean are OK, though.

“Aw, I respect the guy,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher and Mitchell traded insults and boasts all week. Fletcher was the winner of this year’s Jim Thorpe Award, which goes to the nation’s top defensive back. Since Mitchell caught nine passes for 180 yards, mostly going up against Fletcher, as Mitchell says, “I guess that makes me the best receiver in the country, huh?”

“You know what,” Fletcher said, “I admire Freddie. His mouth is as big as mine and so is his talent. Those West Coast guys should feed off Freddie.”

Maybe they will, even if Mitchell does take his mouth and his talent to the pros. The Bruins seem to have understood something in this little bowl game. They seem to have figured out what it takes to play with the big boys.

“They kept their heads up,” Badger tight end Dague Retzlaff said.

Wisconsin safety Joey Boese added, “They were hitting hard even at the end.”

“You know what?” Fletcher said. “This wasn’t what we expected. I admit it. They got hurt and they kept on playing. I think some of their other teams may have given up, but these guys didn’t.”

No, a loss isn’t as good as a win. But sometimes you lose and you grow up. UCLA grew up.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.