A Ray of Sunshine on Dark Day After

With the sting of Saturday’s 66-19 loss to USC still fresh, UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell was glad to talk about playing in the Sun Bowl, where the Bruins will face Northwestern on Dec. 30, and even pointed out his 0-2 mark in postseason games.

“This opportunity gives our players a chance to finish on a positive note,” Dorrell said of the 17th-ranked Bruins, who finished the regular season with a 9-2 record.

“I haven’t won a bowl game. There’s a lot of difficulties with what I’ve been going through the last couple of years and this being my third year ... you want this program to finish the season on a strong note and moving forward toward 2006.”

After giving up 679 yards to the Trojans, UCLA will face another potent offensive team in the 7-4 Wildcats. Led by quarterback Brett Basanez, Northwestern runs a spread offense that averaged 492.7 yards a game, eighth-best in the nation, and averaged 296.8 yards passing, 10th in the nation.

“I’ve seen a little bit of Northwestern during the course of the season, and they have a very good quarterback who operates a pretty wide-open offense,” Dorrell said. “It’s going to be a matchup of two offenses that have the ability to move the football.”

The good news for the Bruins is that Northwestern’s defense ranked last in the NCAA.

The Wildcats have given up 482.9 yards a game, and UCLA has given up 457.6.

“Both defenses have seemed to have had some issues over the course of the season,” said Dorrell, whose team was held to 275 yards and two touchdowns by USC. “The matchups are very similar. It should be an exciting game.”

Like the Bruins, Northwestern can’t stop the run. The Wildcats give up 209.7 yards on the ground, and UCLA has given up an NCAA Division I-A-worst 238.7.

Northwestern Coach Randy Walker said that his team’s defense is bad but not that bad.

“The stats seem to say one thing, but you never know,” Walker said. “We’ve had some success as an offense this year, but we’ve had some good games on defense.

“Hopefully, we can make some strides as a defense with this preparation time, because we are going to need to if we’re going to have a chance to slow down this UCLA attack.”

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Linebacker Spencer Havner on the first-down blitzes UCLA tried in attempting to slow USC’s running game, which gained 430 yards: “We might miss one or two, but we had to take chances to try and catch them for a loss. We had to try and get them into second-and-15 type of plays. You might as well take your shots.”

Havner said the Bruins thought they had quarterback Matt Leinart rattled early. “He was yelling at his linemen to cover us up because our blitzes were getting in there a little bit,” Havner said.

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Running back coach Eric Bieniemy on Saturday’s loss: “We didn’t come to play. ... We didn’t seem to understand that playing the No. 1 team in the country, you have to play your best.

“We have to take a look at ourselves as coaches and have our players reevaluated. We’re disappointed, but we’re not going to hang our heads because we blew an opportunity. The kids have to understand the bottom line is to regroup and go out and find a way to reach 10 victories.”