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Arizona Wildcats @ UCLA Bruins Football Recap

Arizona 29, UCLA 21

The Arizona Wildcats didn’t run wild. They didn’t destroy the UCLA Bruins. They didn’t look like the runaway favorite for the Pac-10 football championship. They didn’t turn heads or create national buzz.

They did one thing, though, on Saturday afternoon at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California: They won.

So many times, a sleepy game in a half-filled (if that) West Coast stadium will hijack a team’s effort level. When there’s so little electricity in a ballyard, a visiting team can find it hard to generate its own momentum and perform with the vigor needed to punch an opponent in the mouth. The conventional wisdom is that it’s hard to perform in raucous stadiums when the locals are out for blood and are raising an unholy cry before each and every snap, and that wisdom – actually – is quite true. The point, though, is that playing in a subdued environment is its own tricky kind of test. In these kinds of situations, teams have to look within and find the fire that propels them forward, giving them enough self-sustaining intensity that can see them through to the end goal.

Plainly put, the Arizona Wildcats – with a backup quarterback, no less – surmounted all these obstacles and punched the time clock with a lunch-pail win over the UCLA Bruins in Westwood. A program that has so often stumbled on the road to bigger and better things, and which has never made the Rose Bowl game in its long and snake-bitten history, survived inside the old bowl it hopes to return to in roughly two months’ time. The ambush was there, waiting to be sprung by Coach Rick Neuheisel’s UCLA lineup, but the Wildcats and coach Mike Stoops held the line in Southern California.

The big key for Arizona within an X-and-O context was the Cats’ ability to shrug off two huge second-half defensive blunders. Arizona’s secondary got smoked on a 68-yard touchdown pass from UCLA quarterback Richard Brehaut to Randall Carroll, and it got snookered on a 49-yard touchdown pass from Brehaut to Josh Smith on a flea-flicker the Bruins executed to perfection. That second touchdown bomb brought the Bruins within five points, at 26-21, but the Arizona defense steadied itself in the final 14 minutes, shutting out UCLA to preserve the win.

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As mentioned earlier, the Wildcats were playing with a backup quarterback. Matt Scott moved to 2-0 as a fill-in starter by hitting two-thirds of his passes (24 of 36) for 319 yards and a touchdown with only one interception. Scott led his teammates on a field goal drive inside the final three minutes which pushed the Cats’ lead to eight points (29-21) and forced UCLA to get both a touchdown and a 2-point conversion to tie. When the Bruins’ drive fizzled out in short order, Arizona had its low-key but very significant win.

Was the Rose Bowl alive in the same way it always is on January 1 of each year? Hardly. Were national TV cameras found in abundance at the nation’s most venerable college football stadium? No. Does this make Arizona’s win any less impressive? Certainly not.

The Wildcats will just move on to their next bit of business, just as quietly as they knocked off UCLA.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer