[Football Preview]: Season hinges on the outcome of this game

For a team full of history students, the Bruins haven’t
shown a real passion for examining their recent past.

And they might not want to start.

This year’s No. 14 UCLA team has made fourth-quarter
comebacks, which for three years were out of the realm of
possibility for the Bruins, look easy.

The task of ending a season strongly, however ““ something
the Bruins haven’t done since 1997 ““ will be left
unanswered until Arizona State (5-4, 3-3 Pac-10) comes to the Rose
Bowl this Saturday, when UCLA (8-1, 5-1) will try to make its
pattern of finishing seasons slowly a thing of the past.

“This game is so big,” senior tight end Marcedes
Lewis said. “So big.”

Even that might be an understatement.

UCLA’s guaranteed bowl game will be the 2005
season’s clincher. The Bruins’ showdown with USC on
Dec. 3 is already the year’s most anticipated match-up. Yet
this Saturday’s contest against Arizona State, the
seniors’ last home game of their career, appears to be the
deal-breaker for everything that follows it.

“This game opens up all of the other possibilities,”
senior cornerback Marcus Cassel said.

At this point, the possibilities are almost endless for the
Bruins.

A win on Saturday will ensure the Bruins a shot at a share of
the Pac-10 title against USC at the Coliseum. A loss, and they
won’t be conference champions.

A win on Saturday, and they will keep their eroding shot at a
BCS bowl bid from completely disappearing. A loss, and they will
most likely be heading to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas or the
less prestigious Insight Bowl in Phoenix, Ariz.

A win on Saturday, and their game against USC will be the most
significant college football game between the two schools since
1988. A loss, and, well, it won’t be.

A win on Saturday, and they will have sustained momentum to end
their season despite last Saturday’s hiccup at Arizona,
solidifying the program’s progress as well. A loss, and their
52-14 defeat at the hands of the Wildcats won’t be viewed as
an aberration, but instead the start of the 2005 season’s
downfall.

“You want to show promise in your program. It’s
helpful for the recruits,” said UCLA coach Karl Dorrell of
the significance of Saturday’s game. “We want to hold
ourselves to the accomplishments we’ve achieved this year,
and (we want to) accomplish more.”

“We’re approaching this like it’s a
championship game,” senior quarterback Drew Olson said.
“Hopefully the level of play will rise and show
that.”

If the level of intensity in practice this week is any
indication, the Bruins know exactly what’s on the line this
Saturday against the Sun Devils.

Olson called Tuesday’s practice, in which the Bruins
practiced in full pads for the first time in weeks, “by
far” the best of the season. Senior linebacker Spencer Havner
said it’s been the most intense week of the season. The
unusual sounds of crashing pads and smashing tackles reverberating
from Spaulding Field this week confirmed both of those
sentiments.

“We’re playing football again,” Olson said.
“We lost sight of that, for whatever reason.”

“The (loss last Saturday) was the only way this could
happen,” said Lewis of the increased intensity. “It
really opened our eyes. It caused us to step back. It was a real
gut check.”

Coming back from potentially devastating losses isn’t
unprecedented for the Bruins. Last season, UCLA shook off an
embarrassing home loss to lowly Washington State to become bowl
eligible the following week on the road against Oregon at hostile
Autzen Stadium..

“Just the urgency of winning. When you lose, you want to
get back to winning again and get the bad taste out of your
mouth,” Dorrell said.

That doesn’t erase the fact that in similar positions the
past few seasons, UCLA has allowed crucial losses to linger.

In 2001, a No. 4 UCLA team that won its first six games went on
to lose four of its last fives games and finished the season
unranked.

In 2003, a 6-2 Bruin team lost its last five games to finish the
season with a losing record.

And even last year, a UCLA team that started 4-1 lost five of
its last seven games to retard any momentum it had built in the
beginning of the season.

Still, like they have all season long, the Bruins prefer to cast
a blind eye to their recent history, believing that only a shot at
a national title was squandered in the desert in Tucson, Ariz.
against the Wildcats, leaving everything else still attainable.

“Those were different circumstances and different
years,” Dorrell said,

“The question of why is this team any different, well
first of all, (we) started 8-0. That’s a big difference. The
character these guys have exhibited all year, there’s a
closeness and unity about them. There is no comparison between what
it’s been the last couple years. I don’t even like to
think about what’s happened the last few years.”

Nor do many of his players.

Between 1999-2004, the Bruins were ranked in the top 25 at some
point in four of those seasons. They finished in the top 25 in none
of them.

But having already defied and ignored history through nine games
of the 2005 season, UCLA sees no reason to start acknowledging this
now, not on the eve of the program’s biggest three-game
stretch in arguably seven years.

“We have to keep the guys positive,” Cassel said.
“We lost one game and it happens sometimes, but we
didn’t get to the record we have now by not being a good
team. We know we’re good, and we just have to bounce
back.”

“Every team wants to finish strongly,” Olson said.
“I have no worries about us faltering.”

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