Football: Bowl game still possible if Bruins prove resilient

When Drew Olson’s desperate two-point conversion toss fell
harmlessly to the turf on Saturday, it ended the Bruins’
chances for a victory. But perhaps more significantly, the loss put
their entire season in serious jeopardy.

Coming into the game against Washington State as a two-touchdown
favorite, UCLA let a golden opportunity to move up in the Pac-10
standings and qualify for a bowl berth slip away.

The loss does not extinguish all hope for a successful season,
but it certainly makes the road that much more difficult. The final
two games will determine how the 2004 UCLA football team will be
remembered.

“Where do you go from here?” junior quarterback Drew
Olson asked. “We’ll see what we’re made of.
We’ll see what kind of heart and resolve this team has.

“We can do two things: We can keep going, or we can do
what we’ve done in the past, and lay back and just fold it
up. I’m not letting anybody on the offense do that, and the
leaders on the defense aren’t going to let it happen. Neither
are the coaches.”

The Bruins will need all the resolve they can muster if they are
to have any bowl prospects. UCLA (5-4, 3-3 Pac-10) next heads to
Oregon (5-4, 4-2) and then has three weeks to prepare before facing
No. 1 USC (9-0, 6-0) in the regular season finale. UCLA will be
underdogs in both contests.

If the Bruins don’t win either game, their season will be
over.

“It definitely is tough at this part of the
schedule,” senior wideout Craig Bragg said. “Every time
we play Oregon it’s a great game; that’s all we can
think about now. If we beat Oregon we’re bowl-eligible, and
we’re able to play a little longer.”

Saturday was a prime opportunity for Bragg and the rest of the
seniors to extend their college careers by a game. But by the end,
their attempts did not garner a win.

“We know that you need six (wins) to qualify for a bowl,
but we just wanted to win,” senior tailback Manuel White
said. “We didn’t step up and do what we had to do. We
just have to learn from our mistakes.”

Unfortunately for the Bruins, there may not be much more time
for learning.

After their heartbreaking loss to Arizona State three weeks ago,
they responded by shutting out Stanford, drastically improving the
defensive liabilities that had cost them for much of the
season.

Against Washington State, there was an obvious regression. UCLA
must now go back to the drawing board to conjure up that same
bounce-back magic.

“We knew the lineup we had the last three games, and that
all three got harder each step of the way,” coach Karl
Dorrell said. “This is a great example to learn from again.
Unfortunately, we can’t keep saying that. We have to learn
one time, move forward, and keep building.”

At the very least, the Bruins appear resolute that they will not
allow Saturday’s setback to bring them down and that they
will not let this season end in the slump that has come to
characterize years past.

“Probably the best characteristic of our team is
we’ll never quit,” junior safety Jarrad Page said.
“We’ve been there after the Arizona State game when it
seemed like everyone thought it was all over for us. This team
won’t quit and won’t listen to any of that.”

One approach the Bruins have adopted is treating
Saturday’s game as an aberration. The Bruins could
alternatively choose to have selective memory by taking some
positives from the game, of note their second-half comeback.

“We just got to look forward,” junior tight end
Marcedes Lewis said. “We can’t dwell on the past. Yeah,
this game happened, we lost, whatever, but we got to bounce back.
We’re going to take the positive things we did in the game
and move on from there.”

Whatever mentality the Bruins adopt, they will have to make sure
it eliminates their problems soon. If the team repeats its
performance against Stanford, they’ll have a good chance to
win and earn a bowl appearance. But if the Bruins’ effort
against the Ducks and Trojans resembles that of Saturday’s
game against Washington State, they will have plenty of time to
correct their problems in the offseason.