With his shoulders slumped, his back arched and arms limply
crossed on the press table, UCLA coach Karl Dorrell looked
beat.
The third-year coach wasn’t his regal self the way he had
been for the past two weeks, after an impressionable victory over
then-ranked Oklahoma. Instead, he sat silently.
It wasn’t the look of a coach who now boasts an undefeated
mark of 4-0, the best record by a UCLA team since 2001.
This was a Bruin coach who saw his No. 20 team barely survive
against conference doormat Washington, 21-17, Saturday night at the
Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
“That was one of those games you learn a lot about
yourself as a team and a program,” said Dorrell, who breathed
a sigh of relief before addressing the media. “Our defense
was doing some things sporadically, as were our offense and our
special teams.
“Sometimes you’re not going have your best
performance and you have to put together a performance to win a
football game. There was no quit in the team.”
Coming off a bye week, the Bruins (4-0, 1-0 Pac-10) trailed the
entire game, finding themselves down by as much as 10 points. But
with 3:39 in the final quarter, the Bruin defense made crucial
stops that set up a final drive by senior quarterback Drew
Olson.
Leading an offense plagued with inconsistency all night long,
Olson engineered a game-winning drive that began on UCLA’s
27-yard line. He completed six of seven passes to six different
receivers, one of which was a 5-yard pass on fourth-and-one to
junior wide receiver Andrew Baumgartner and a 39-yard pass along
the left sideline to Marcus Everett to set up junior running back
Maurice Drew’s clinching touchdown.
All of this came after a shaky performance in the first three
quarters that saw Olson throw his first two interceptions of the
season, which broke a streak of 96 consecutive attempts without an
interception.
“Last year I stumbled a couple times and I always knew I
was better than that,” said Olson, who raised his arms in
celebration after taking a knee to run the clock out.
“I’m not sure this team would have won this game last
year.”
Drew, who struggled in the game for 33 yards on 14 carries, was
initially halted at the goal line but spun left and made the
second-effort push for the end zone.
“We’re going to take this and treasure it,”
said Drew about the close call against Washington. “Heart,
passion and character ““ that’s what this game showed
us.”
Unlike the previous five times the Bruins were ranked 20 or
higher nationally, they didn’t lose their very next game. The
Bruins stumbled out of the gate, but they held on and didn’t
buckle under the pressure of being behind.
Yet being shut out 10-0 going into halftime for the first time
in four years, senior linebacker Spencer Havner admitted he thought
of past seasons, especially 2001, when UCLA went 6-0 only to drop
its next four decisions.
“(The collapse of past seasons) crossed my mind,”
Havner said. “But that’s when you step up and become
vocal, when you try to get people to respond, try to play better
yourself. And I saw that. Everyone took their turn when we needed
to play big.”
There are others on the team who shy away from comparisons to
the past.
“This is a whole new team. Everything that happened in the
past, we don’t even think about,” senior linebacker
Justin London said. “I’m proud of this team. Even when
the chips were down, we understand that the bottom line was that we
have to get it done.”
Every member on the team took the victory against the Huskies
(1-4, 0-2) as a testament to their character ““ ultimately a
gut-check.
Still, the Bruins entered the game as heavy favorites, and it
surprised many that they needed fourth-quarter heroics to eke out
the win.
Washington’s junior quarterback Isaiah Stanback provided a
spark as he ran for 50 yards and threw for 188, but this was a
Huskies team averaging 21.2 points per game (last in the Pac-10)
and a team coming off a paltry 1-10 record last season.
This was the same program that hadn’t won a conference
game since the 2003 season and was playing the fourth most potent
offense (49.3 points per game) in the nation coming into the
game.
“Sometimes you mistake records to be a telltale sign of
the opponent,” said Dorrell, who is now 3-0 in Pac-10
openers. “If you do those kinds of things, you get caught and
blindsided.”
Washington had every opportunity to pull the upset as UCLA
struggled throughout the contest. Olson, who ranked sixth in the
nation in passing completion percentage, started out the game
1-for-5 passing in the first quarter for one yard. Drew slipped and
stumbled for 15 yards on the ground in the opening period.
Amid the lackluster start, fans began booing the Bruins as they
walked into the locker room at halftime.
“It was a frustrating game for the most part,” Olson
said. “We shouldn’t really have to (come from behind)
the way we’ve been playing coming up to this game.”
UCLA’s first touchdown came at the start of the third
quarter, when Olson completed a four-yard touchdown pass to senior
tight end Marcedes Lewis, who had a career-high eight receptions,
to shrink Washington’s lead 10-7.
Once again, the Bruins’ running game sputtered for a
combined 65 yards.
On the other end, the Huskies danced around and broke tackles
for 213 yards on the ground. Washington running backs Kenny James
and Louis Rankin accounted for 161 yards. Stanback had one
touchdown run on a quarterback sneak at the goal line to give the
Huskies a 17-7 lead with 4:30 remaining in the third quarter.
London felt they nearly handed this game over to Washington.
“I think we beat ourselves. I think our lack of tackling
was our biggest Achilles’ heel,” London said. “We
missed a lot of tackles and that was what kept them in.
“We understand (that in the fourth quarter), we have to
either sock them back in the mouth or just lay down.”
In the fourth quarter, UCLA’s defense held Washington
scoreless and allowed just two first-down conversions.
The Huskies did have one last shot with 1:08 remaining, but a
sack from behind by Bruin sophomore linebacker Bruce Davis and
three desperation throws by Stanback let UCLA hang on for the
victory.
After the fourth-down incomplete pass, Stanback knelt to the
floor, knowing his team had given one away.