Bruins Kept Grip When It Mattered

As with many of us, their first steps were awkward.

The UCLA football team tentatively returned to work Saturday, dropping things they usually don’t drop, forgetting things they never forget.

But they also did something as meaningful as it was muddled.

They got through it.

Where their finesse failed, their forcefulness didn’t. What they couldn’t accomplish with speed, they accomplished with shoulders.

The Bruins beat Ohio State, 13-6, in a multi-colored, taffy-textured football game that could have fit neatly into a package of the candy “Now and Later.”

Now, it looks satisfactory.

Later, it could look splendid.

If the Bruins are still contending for a national title in a couple of months, this is where it started.

An offense with seven fumbles overcome by a defense with eight tackles for losses.

Two missed field goals offset by two interceptions.

Trick plays overshadowed by linebackers with nothing up their sleeves.

And 73,723 fans who noticed.

“Dee-fense, dee-fense,” they chanted from the Rose Bowl end zone as the Bruins left the field, not believing their ears.

“This is the first time in four years here that I’ve ever heard that,” defensive tackle Ken Kocher said.

In a nationally televised game, the only matchup between ranked teams, and the first football game in town since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bruins were offered an important moment.

They didn’t exactly seize it, but they didn’t let it slip away, either.

Let’s just say they cradled it.

Coach Bob Toledo has a week to figure out how to transport it to Corvallis.

“These kinds of games are good, because they make you realize you’ve got to keep hanging in there,” he said. “You keep fighting and battling, you’ll have a chance to win it at the end.”

These games are more than games, he said.

“It’s an attitude,” he said.

It is an attitude not seen around here in several years, and just one of several unusual sights Saturday.

The Bruins’ championship banners were replaced with red, white and blue bunting.

The home uniform jerseys were replaced with those bearing an appropriately richer shade of blue.

The Buckeye offense started four drives in UCLA territory, yet did not score on one of them.

“We picked up the slack when the offense messed up, something that hasn’t happened in a long time around here,” defensive end Kenyon Coleman said.

Then there was, as Kocher noted, all those new sounds.

Somebody singing “God Bless America.”

Somebody singing “America the Beautiful.”

A loud audible from Cory Paus that became the only touchdown the Bruins needed.

“The play in the huddle was planned, but the play at the line, I made it up,” Paus said with that goofy grin after throwing a 24-yard pass to Ryan Smith during a Buckeye blitz. “I can still do that kind of stuff, you know.”

Flitting about the backfield, Paus has yet to control a game as Toledo would hope, and the offense converted on only two third downs after the opening drive.

Yet it didn’t matter because the defense held Ohio State to only one conversion the entire game.

Then there was DeShaun Foster, who fumbled four times. But it didn’t matter because the defense allowed one complete pass in the second half.

“It was really nice to make plays out there and celebrate,” said linebacker Robert Thomas, speaking with quiet astonishment. “It was fun.”

A mitigating factor must be introduced here, that being Ohio State’s awful offense. Judging by some of the rookie stuff the Buckeyes showed, the home of Woody Hayes has become the home of Pop Warner.

They seemed confused before plays, misdirected during plays, frustrated afterward.

“They did a lot of talking when the game started, then they got real quiet,” Kocher said. “By the time the game ended, it was like they didn’t even want to come up to the line of scrimmage.”

The only thing worse than their offense is their kicking game, manned mostly by freshmen, with two missed two field goals and a missed extra point accompanying a nine-yard punt.

Is it too late for the Bruins to apply to the Big Ten?

For now, they should only be concentrating now on the number 3.

They were 3-0 last year as well, before losing six of their last nine games.

They were 3-0 in 1998, on the way to 10-0, before collapsing at the end of the season with consecutive losses.

“But hey, this is the first time I’ve gone through the first three games without being injured,” said Paus, laughing. “I’m still here. That’s something, isn’t it?”

On the other side of the locker room, Foster was being equally realistic.

Excuses for the fumbles? Hand still hurts? Ball was stripped?

“No, none of that,” he said. “The first three, I fumbled myself. The last one, I tried to push the ball through and it got knocked out.”

On previous Bruin teams, everyone seemed to worry about blame.

On Saturday, the biggest of them all accepted it.

“I have a problem carrying the ball one-handed, I know that, I’ve been told that,” Foster said. “Two hands. I need to work on two hands.”

Just before the players left the locker room for the start of the game, Toledo filled their helmets with one final thought.

“He told us there is no guarantee for the future, that we need to play every play as if it were our last play,” linebacker Audie Attar said.

Any other time, that might be corny.

On Saturday, it rang clear, accompanying the Bruins through first steps that were a bit clumsy, somewhat unsettling, and clearly the start of something.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com