Sting of loss to Irish remains

It was an afternoon at the movies for UCLA football players Sunday, a horror feature that will continue to haunt their nights.

One minute 29 seconds remain, Notre Dame has the ball on its own 20-yard line trailing 17-13. . .

The final scene in that slasher film still gives Bruins players chills.

“We took a couple glimpses of that game film [Sunday] just to get into the mind-set of that feeling we experienced last year and not to let that happen again this year,” cornerback Trey Brown said.

The Bruins get a rematch with the Fighting Irish at the Rose Bowl on Saturday, a chance to dull the pain of last season’s 20-17 loss in South Bend. UCLA dominated that game, then lost when Notre Dame went 80 yards in three plays, scoring with 27 seconds left.

A year has done little to make the memory fade to black for the Bruins.

Said Coach Karl Dorrell said: “Last year’s game and how it ended up will be on our mind for years and years to come. I’m sure 20 years from now they’ll remember that game.”

Still, Dorrell said, “We can’t let that get in the way of how we need to progress as a football team.”

But Brown is more than happy to add it to his motivation this week, even if beating up on the 0-5 Irish would seem a little like bullying this season.

“I’m not a big Notre Dame fan, so I don’t know what they have done prior in their history, all I know is I don’t like the green,” Brown said at a Monday news conference. “I don’t even like money this week, that color. Before I came in here, I threw my wallet in the trash. I don’t like those guys and they don’t like us, that’s what it is. It comes down to who’s going make more plays Saturday.”

The Bruins are odds-on favorites to be the ones making the plays, as the Irish are off to their worst start in the program’s history.

Still, that worries Brown to an extent.

“We can’t let the record fool you,” Brown said. “Whether they’re 0-5 or 30-0, we got to treat this team like any other team, go out there and play dominant football for four quarters.”

Brown’s habit of yakking at opposing receivers was the subject of conversation Monday. Brown said that, at times, it’s merely the search for greater knowledge. . . really.

“A lot of times people think that when you talk noise out there it’s all trash talking,” Brown said. “It’s not really like that all the time. When you discuss things with opposing players, sometimes, you kind of get a feel for what the wide receiver is doing and what he wants to do out there. It’s not always trash talk, it’s sometimes a nice conversation.”

And the ratio on trash talk to nice conversations?

“About 50-50,” he said. “It depends how the game goes.”

Asked what he would say to a receiver from an 0-5 team that has a storied tradition, Brown laughed and said, “I’ll have to work something out on Saturday.”

Dorrell said Chris Markey’s “turf toe” was the only “significant” injury from Saturday’s 40-14 victory over Oregon State.

“Most likely, he will not practice until later in the week,” Dorrell sad. “We’ll determine that day by day.”

If Markey cannot play, the running game will be in the hands of Kahlil Bell, who is third in the Pacific 10 Conference with 522 yards rushing.

Dorrell said he expects Jimmy Clausen to be available as Notre Dame’s quarterback this week. Clausen left Saturday’s game against Purdue.

“We heard the injury was a hip pointer and you usually recover from those pretty easily,” Dorrell said. “If that was the injury, I expect to see both Jimmy and the backup [Evan Sharpley], who played the later part of the [Purdue] game. Both are good players.”

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chris.foster@latimes.com