A Last Easy Step Instead Turns Into Tumble for Humbled Bruins

“O-ver-rated!”

The chant was a chilled desert wind whipping through the battered UCLA helmets Saturday, familiar, yet different.

For the first time in an autumn in which the Bruins have heard it often, the song was neither trick nor taunt.

It was truth.

“O-ver-rated!”

Yes, the Bruins are exactly that, a nation’s sneaking suspicions being realized in a team’s worst fears on the blackest of nights.

From undefeated to embarrassed, from fifth in the BCS to flat on their backs, a season of flowery prose dwindled to two simple words.

Arizona? Arizona?

In a game that ended with students climbing on a goalpost while dreams toppled to the sand, a hapless eighth-place team whipped a charmed eight-win team, Arizona laying a 52-14 beating on UCLA.

After which, Coach Karl Dorrell stood shocked at one end of the Arizona Stadium field while kids danced and hugged and bounced at the other end.

“It was one of those humble butt-kickings,” he said, his words barely audible over the howls.

This was supposed to be the Bruins’ last easy step in their delightfully unexpected journey toward the Rose Bowl. Instead, it became the No More Bowl.

No more playing for the national championship.

No more playing USC when both teams are unbeaten.

No more Dorrell for mayor or Drew for Heisman.

Hello, Miami.

The date said Nov. 5, 2005, but it felt like Dec. 5, 1998, and you know where I’m going with this.

On that day seven years ago, unranked Miami inexplicably scored 49 points to break the Bruins’ 20-game win streak and send the program into a tailspin from which Bob Toledo never recovered.

Substitute cactus for palm trees, and this game was that game.

Missed tackles? Check. Muffed assignments? Check. An entire team that flew here Friday from Los Angeles yet somehow failed to show up? Believe it.

Folks had guessed the Bruins, who had barely survived for weeks with an undersized defensive line and an erratic offense, weren’t that good.

But who knew they could be this bad?

Arizona had won one game since Sept. 10. It had won five conference games in four years. It featured a freshman quarterback making his second start.

The bar is set so low here, midway through the game the press box announcer intoned, “While not the stuff of BCS dreams, Arizona has now led for five straight quarters.”

But the Bruins weren’t laughing. Mostly, on the sidelines throughout the game, they were gesturing and stomping and shaking their heads in what appeared to be anger and confusion.

“We did not play at the level we needed to play from the outset,” said Dorrell, blaming not only his players but himself and his coaching staff, and rightly so.

UCLA’s first series featured Drew Olson missing one open receiver, throwing to the wrong guy on third down, and a punt.

Arizona’s first series featured a 51-yard pass to a running back sneaking wide open out of the backfield, and a 17-yard reverse by a wide receiver for a touchdown.

“You start like that, you get the defense on its heels,” Arizona Coach Mike Stoops said with a grin.

And everywhere but in the ball carrier’s face.

The villain in that Miami game was then-anonymous running back Edgerrin James. The villains Saturday were two unknown guys who ran just like him.

Mike Bell and Gilbert Harris each ran for triple figures, leading a 315-yard rushing attack by a team that was last in the Pac-10 in rushing with 97 yards per game.

Said Harris: “We didn’t expect it to be this easy.”

Chimed in Bell: “It was a different feeling, a really cool feeling, not even getting touched.”

Just like against Miami, that wasn’t a UCLA defense, it was a thrill ride.

“Sometimes it was like, ‘How can you let that dude go right by you?’ ” Jarrad Page said.

Arizona scored on its second possession after the flustered Bruins called time out immediately after an Arizona timeout, then allowed Brad Wood to be wide open for a seven-yard touchdown pass from freshman quarterback Willie Tuitama.

Arizona scored on its third possession on a drive that lasted two plays. And scored on its fourth possession after converting a third-and-12 play from its own eight-yard line.

And when the Bruins finally began their attempt to mount their fifth double-digit comeback this season? Their luck turned when Olson was given a bad spot on a third-down run, and their will faltered when Olson was then stopped on a fourth-and-one sneak from the Arizona five-yard line.

“We knew they had sneaked out of a bunch of games this year with comeback wins,” said Harris. “But it finally caught up with them.”

Toledo was never able to right his team after its fall to earth, losing in the Rose Bowl in 1998, then losing four of its last five after a 6-0 start in 2001.

It will be the biggest test of Dorrell’s young career, to stop this sudden bleeding on a team that is still fairly unscarred at 8-1, and that could still have a shot to shock the No. 1 team in the country.

For now, though, he can only ponder Saturday’s final insult. On fourth and seven with 3:03 remaining and leading by 38 points, Stoops not only called a timeout, he then directed Tuitama to throw to Mike Thomas streaking toward the end zone.

Only a bad pass kept the Wildcats from further running up the score, and when asked if he had any comment, a clearly peeved Dorrell said, “None.”

Gravity stinks.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.