Over the last three weeks, UCLA has proven it knows how to
finish a football game in dramatic fashion. Starting a game,
however, has been anything but stylish. In UCLA’s last three
games, the team has fallen behind by at least 10 or more points in
the first half, trailing Washington by 10, California by 13 and
Washington State by 21. Though the postgame locker room atmosphere
has been rather euphoric after the team’s three consecutive
comeback wins, the Bruins don’t want to be in the position
every week of needing a touchdown in the final minute to walk away
victors. “It gets tiring trying to come back,” running
back Maurice Drew said. “As a team, we need to talk about
this. Enough is enough doing all this comeback stuff.”
“It’s horrible, flat-out,” quarterback Drew Olson
said. “No one likes doing it. There’s no team in the
world that wants to see itself down 21-0.” UCLA coach Karl
Dorrell said that starting off games with more intensity and better
execution would be the primary issue addressed in practice this
week. Still, he admitted he doesn’t even know why the Bruins
start off as poorly as they do. “We seem to like the
double-digit deficits in the fourth quarter, so the hard things we
do well,” Dorrell said. “Potentially, we could be so
much better than we are. We just have to show that potential in the
first quarter.” Which to this point in the season, the
Bruins’ opponents have dominated. Of the six teams UCLA has
played against so far this season, four have taken their opening
drive to the end zone for a touchdown. The other two teams, San
Diego State and Washington, both scored touchdowns on their third
drive of the game. And if UCLA’s opponents aren’t
running up the scoreboard in the first half, they’re at least
running cleanly past Bruin defenders. In the last three games,
Bruin opponents have gained more rushing yards at halftime than
UCLA accumulated for the entire game. While the Bruin players
don’t attribute the slow starts to coming out of the locker
room unenthused or being surprised by their opponents’
schemes, they still don’t know why they find themselves in
daunting holes in the first half. Once in those holes, however,
UCLA knows exactly what to do. “It’s very dangerous (to
think like that),” fullback Michael Pitre said. “But
when I look at the scoreboard, I still know we can do
it.”
HORTON RETURNS: Free safety Chris Horton is
expected to play this Saturday’s game against Oregon State,
Dorrell announced on Monday. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound sophomore, who
was listed as a starter before injuring his left wrist in the
beginning of fall camp, had pins removed from that wrist last week.
Sophomore free safety Dennis Keyes has filled in admirably for
Horton, registering 38 tackles in UCLA’s six games, second
most on the team after linebacker Spencer Havner.
BOWL ELIGIBLE: With their win over Washington
State on Saturday, the Bruins became bowl eligible. It marks the
sixth consecutive year UCLA has been bowl eligible, though the team
did not play a bowl game in 2001 despite going 7-4.
EXTRA POINTS: Olson’s 31 completions
against Washington State were the second-most ever in school
history, one behind Troy Aikman’s mark of 32 against USC in
1988. … The Bruins have started 6-0 in 10 previous seasons, the
most recent being 2001. … The game against Stanford in Palo Alto
on Oct. 29 is scheduled to kick off at 3:30 p.m. and will be
televised by Fox Sports Net.