With about three minutes left in Saturday’s game, Stanford had a first-and-10 on UCLA’s 20-yard line. They had taken possession with more than seven minutes left on the clock and one more first down would seal the win. So they stuck with their game plan and handed the ball off to Toby Gerhart three times in a row.
The 6-foot-1-inch 228-pound running back had racked up 132 yards on the ground up until that point, but he couldn’t get 10 more.
The Bruin defense dropped Gerhart a yard short on the third down to force a field goal attempt ““ doing what they couldn’t accomplish late in the games against Fresno State and Oregon.
Though the field goal was good, putting the Cardinal up 20-16 with only 2:31 left, the Bruin defense was able to give the offense an opportunity to win the game.
It was the turning point in the game and a sign of maturation for a unit that had failed to get off the field in crucial situations in recent weeks. Against Fresno State, the Bruins could not stop an almost nine-minute Bulldog drive to end the game and at Oregon they gave up a nail-in-the-coffin 69-yard run with just two minutes left.
“I looked up at the scoreboard and there was like seven minutes left,” redshirt senior defensive tackle Brigham Harwell said. “We knew that we had to get a stop. It came back- the memories of Fresno State, how they had a 17-play drive against us. I got nervous. But we got off the field. We did a great job and we held them to a field goal. We had confidence in the offense, and they did a great job.”
Stanford’s offense made it clear what they wanted to do, especially in the final minutes. They threw the ball only 13 times all game, and if the Bruins were going to get the ball back, they needed to stop Gerhart.
“He’s a big back, and we knew we had to stop him,” Harwell said. “We knew we had to contain him, but he still had a great game. They had a great game plan for him, but we knew how to tackle. He’s a big kid, and you’ve got to hit him low. That’s what we did, and the big difference in this game was tackling.”
Unlike last week at Oregon when missed tackles plagued the Bruin defense, UCLA had few mistakes in fundamentals against the Cardinal. After the game, Harwell explained his unorthodox method of practicing tackling
“Personally, whenever I’m on campus and I see a football player, I’ll go run and tackle him ““ I move my feet,” he said.
VERNER DEFERS TO REFEREE ON PENALTY CALL: On the Cardinal’s second play of their final drive, quarterback Tavita Pritchard tried to catch the UCLA defense off guard and threw deep downfield. He underthrew the pass, creating a jump-ball situation between UCLA corner Alterraun Verner and the Stanford receiver.
After some contact, Verner came down with the ball but the official threw a flag, calling Verner for pass interference and a 15-yard penalty.
“(The referee) told one of my teammates that I was mugging (the receiver) all the way down the field,” Verner said. “They called it because I guess I had too much contact with him. I was just trying to go get the ball. It’s up to the refs. The refs got to call what they see.
“I’m not going to say it was a bad call because I can’t see what I’m doing and look at the ball at the same time.”
Verner was also part of a play earlier in the game in which he came down with the ball after a Stanford pass was tipped, The pass was ruled to have hit the ground and was called incomplete, and Verner had no complaints.
“Oh no, I didn’t catch that ball,” Verner said. “That’s why I didn’t even protest. It hit the ground. I was just hoping he didn’t see it.”