Trailing by 12 points, the fourth quarter clock ticking away,
and stopped at their own 42-yard line on fourth down, the Bruins
were seemingly out of answers.
That is, until UCLA coach Karl Dorrell provided one nobody saw
coming.
The Bruin offensive linemen were so sure Dorrell had decided to
punt, they physically tried to stop the punt team from coming onto
the field.
Defensive lineman Bruce Davis jumped up and down on the sideline
in vehement disapproval.
Most of 84,811 fans packed into the Rose Bowl on Saturday
thought it an opportune time to rain down the loudest boos thus far
of the 2005 season.
But Dorrell essentially covered his ears, closed his eyes, and
did his best not to crack a smile or tip his hand.
He had just committed himself to arguably the biggest call of
his young coaching career, a fake punt, which led to undoubtedly
the biggest victory of his young coaching career.
Jarrad Page’s 38-yard gain off the fake punt infused the
Bruins with enough spirit and moxie to score 19 unanswered points
in the fourth quarter and claim their second dramatic comeback
victory in as many weeks, this time a 47-40 win against No. 10
California.
“I was thinking about it, but you have to make it look
like you weren’t,” Dorrell said.
“It worked pretty well, too, because our fans were booing,
so they played right into the acting. We just needed a big
play.”
Which is, coincidentally, exactly what running back Maurice Drew
provided the Bruins (5-0, 2-0 Pac-10) throughout all of
Saturday’s game to keep his team’s comeback bid against
the Bears (5-1, 2-1) on life support.
Drew ran around, ran over and ran through California’s
defense and special teams units, accumulating 299 all-purpose yards
and tying his own school record he set last year at Washington with
five touchdowns. None were more important than his fourth
touchdown, however, which came on a 28-yard screen pass with 1:35
left in the fourth quarter to put UCLA ahead, 41-40. His fifth
score of the night came on a 2-yard run as the clock expired.
“Boy, it was really neat watching him,” offensive
coordinator Tom Cable said “Admiration (is all I can
say).”
“We let Maurice Drew get loose too many times,”
California coach Jeff Tedford said.
Though the Bruins, one of only nine Division I-A teams to still
be undefeated, had secured a similar late fourth-quarter comeback
victory over Washington just the week before, the increased
magnitude of their contest against the Bears was apparent during
and after Saturday’s game.
When Bruin cornerback Trey Brown intercepted Bear quarterback
Joe Ayoob with 1:01 remaining to preserve the victory, many UCLA
players, including Page, instantly celebrated with one another,
forgetting that Brown was looking to return the ball deep into
California territory and that the play was still live.
After the game, in the locker room, high fives and chest bumps,
which were the standard displays of affection only a week prior,
yielded to long drawn-out hugs and boisterous collective chants of
the fight song.
“Man, it’s never been this real,” said an
emotional senior linebacker Justin London. “There’s a
lot of love in here, man.”
“This is all new for us,” said senior quarterback
Drew Olson of the emotion. “We want to keep expanding on this
feeling. It’s beautiful.”
It’s a feeling that almost all of the Bruins have been
unaccustomed to in their time in Westwood.
UCLA, which defeated a top-10 ranked team for the first time
since 2001 with a 35-13 victory over Washington, snapped
California’s 12-game regular-season winning streak, which was
the third-longest such streak in the country.
The Bruins found a way to win a game in which they were
out-gained by 150 yards and possessed the ball for nine fewer
minutes.
With the rankings released Sunday, UCLA jumped up to 12th in the
country in the Associated Press poll, its highest standing since
2001.
And for the second week in a row, the Bruins did what they
couldn’t do for the last three years by engineering a
game-winning drive late in the game.
Starting at his own 25-yard line with 2:30 left on the clock,
Olson marched UCLA down the field just as he did last week,
completing three of five passes for 75 yards, with the key pass
going to receiver Marcus Everett over the middle for 38 yards to
set up the game-winning score.
Olson, however, would rather not get the reputation as the
“comeback kid.”
“I never like playing from behind, ever,” said
Olson, who finished completing 17 of 33 passes for 225 yards and
two touchdowns. “But this game is funky. Obviously we
don’t want to do this every week, but if need be, guys will
step up and come through.”
After the emotional win, Dorrell felt prompted to offer a
“state of the team speech,” even though he only seemed
to be echoing what his team’s performance against California
had already shown.
“We know we’re young, we know we’re
undersized, and we have a lot of things like that we know about
ourselves,” Dorrell said. “It doesn’t mean we
can’t play football. We’re not perfect. We have a lot
to improve on. But I think we’re perfect with our
attitude.”
The Bruins had to be on Saturday to dig out of the daunting hole
they found themselves in to begin the game.
On only California’s second play from scrimmage, Bear
running back Justin Forsett sprinted 52 yards down the field to set
up his 1-yard plunge into the end zone two plays later.
On the ensuing kickoff, Bruin running back Chris Markey fumbled
the kick return, which was recovered by Cal and converted into a
touchdown one play later to give the Bears a 14-0 lead, all in the
span of 40 seconds.
“You can’t start a game any worse than that,”
Page said.
The Bruin run defense had fits once again containing the run,
allowing Forsett (158 yards) and Marshawn Lynch (137 yards) to pace
a California rushing attack that recorded an astounding 345 rushing
yards on Saturday.
But every time the Bears looked to put the game out of reach,
holding a nine-point lead in each of the four quarters, the Bruins
received a big play to revive their spirits, and the crowd’s
as well.
Down 14-0, Drew returned a punt 69 yards to California’s
4-yard line, setting up Olson’s touchdown pass to Joe Cowan
on the next play.
Then down 27-21, Drew returned a punt 81 yards for a touchdown,
his third of the season and fourth of his career, both school
records.
But the devastating blow came at the end, as Drew hopped,
skipped and evaded California’s defenders for the
game-winning score, putting his final mark on a 47-40 verdict in
UCLA’s favor that looked unimaginable nearly four hours
earlier.
Following that play, California’s defenders walked back
toward their sideline the same way the Bruins did midway through
the first quarter, eyes bewildered and heads shaking in disbelief,
but with one key difference.
No time left to salvage a win.
“All you can do is believe and claim victory,”
London said. “We claim it. We speak it. We took this
game.”