Toledo Remains Confident

The honeymoon is over and the hits just keep on coming.

A coach in his first year with a team goes 5-6 with young, suspect talent, beats the archrival in overtime and talk is of a bright future.

A coach in his second year with a team loses two games that were winnable and the future is now in Texas on Saturday.

Why run on third and three, down six points, with 53 seconds to play against Tennessee?

Why run a freshman on fourth and goal from a foot away, down three points at Washington State?

Just . . . why?

“This is all highly thought out. Trust me,” said UCLA Coach Bob Toledo, who is hearing criticism that works its way through several filters. “We’re not just a bunch of slappies sitting in there, drinking coffee in the team room, OK? We do a lot of work. . . .

“As long as my wife and my daughters love me and hug me, and my football players still love me, I don’t care what the other people think. I really don’t. They don’t know what we know. They don’t work as hard as we work. They can sit up there in the press box and speculate and do all those things, but I can’t let that bother me.”

What bothers him is losing, and the way UCLA lost to Tennessee, 30-24, on Saturday with two possessions in Volunteer territory for no points in the last 2 1/2 minutes weighs heavily.

About as heavily as having the ball inside the one at Washington State with 5:50 to play and failing to score in a 37-34 loss.

Two losses by a total of nine points. Moral victories are for moralists. Toledo is a football coach.

“I want to make something perfectly clear,” he said Monday. “I do not--and you can underline ‘do not’--believe in moral victories. I never, ever will believe in moral victories. You either win or you lose, period.”

The Bruins have lost twice and it’s getting to him.

“I’m worn down,” he said. “It hurts. It hurts bad, but . . . I can’t drop my head and have my lip touch the ground, and all that stuff. I hurt. I’m in pain. I don’t like it. . . . But I’m not going to let them get down. They’re not going to quit.

“They didn’t quit and they played hard [in both games], and eventually it’s going to pay off.”

It would have paid off two weeks in a row now, but for mistakes on key plays that could have made UCLA 2-0, ranked high in every college football poll and looking for an extra home game.

Say Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl.

At Washington State, freshman Jermaine Lewis didn’t see an opening to the end zone and was tackled for no gain.

Saturday, it was the third-and-three call from the Tennessee 20 with 53 seconds to play. Skip Hicks took a handoff from Cade McNown and was tripped up by the Volunteers’ Anthony Hampton.

Why run? Why not throw?

The answer is in a script and in videotape, the before-and-after of any Hollywood production or football situation.

The script--coaches and television announcers delight in calling it the game plan--called for UCLA to move right tackle Chad Overhauser, its best lineman, to the left side of the formation, lining up next to Kris Farris, giving Hicks two 300-pounders to run behind. The two players left on the right side of center Shawn Stuart, guard Andy Meyers and tight end Mike Grieb, are charged with keeping out any weak-side defenders who might crash the play before it can develop.

It was a play that had worked all three times it had been run Saturday, once for a seven-yard touchdown run by Hicks that could have been a touchdown walk.

The fourth time, a block was missed and Tennessee’s weak-side linebacker, Hampton, got Hicks around the shoe top before he could get behind the efforts of Overhauser and Farris.

Hicks was stopped for no gain, setting up fourth down.

McNown then overthrew an open Eric Scott on the goal line to finish UCLA’s day.

“If you go back and you watch that [third-down] play . . . and you see the run, you’d say you’d call it again,” Toledo said. “And if you see the last play of the game . . . you would certainly bet your house on the play.

“But there is a human element to this game. It’s not just the X’s and O’s and the scientific part. There are people who play those X’s and O’s . . . . and sometimes they do some great things and sometimes they break your heart.”

When they do, you are 0-2 and the wolves are howling.

“You don’t rely on gut instinct,” Toledo insisted. “You rely on facts. . . These aren’t hunches we have. These are educated decisions.

“But it’s like anything else. The pretty lines [in a playbook] don’t always work, because if they all worked, every pretty line you have would be a touchdown.”

UCLA is 0-2, and Texas is ranked 11th in the nation and playing the Bruins at Austin, where it’s going to be hot.

So is the temperature.

“It’s not over,” said Toledo. “We’ve got a lot of football left. . . . The last four Rose Bowls that UCLA went to, they did not win the first league game.

“In 1993, they lost the league opener [to California], lost the second game [to Nebraska] and went on to win eight games and go to the Rose Bowl. We’re not dead and buried yet.

“I’ll keep all the nice letters I’ve been getting, because when we get to the top of the mountain, I’m going to write each one of them a letter and thank them. And thank God for Jolie [Oliver, Toledo’s administrative assistant, guardian of the good news and sentry against the bad], because I still haven’t gotten a bad one.”

But the criticism is still getting through. There’s only one way to head it off and Toledo knows it.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rocky Road to Rose Bowl

How UCLA’s last four Rose Bowl teams started the season:

* 1993--0-2, with losses to California, 27-25, and Nebraska, 14-13. Finished 8-3 before losing to Wisconsin, 21-16, in the Rose Bowl game.

* 1985--2-1-1, with a victory over BYU, 27-24; a tie with Tennessee, 26-26; a victory over San Diego State, 34-16; and a loss to Washington, 21-14. Finished 8-2-1 before beating Iowa, 45-28, in the Rose Bowl game.

* 1983--0-3-1, with a loss to Georgia, 19-8; a tie against Arizona State, 26-26; and losses to Nebraska, 42-10, and BYU, 37-35. Finished 6-4-1 before beating Illinois, 45-9, in the Rose Bowl game.

* 1982--4-0-1, with victories over Long Beach State, 41-10; Wisconsin, 51-26; Michigan, 31-27; and Colorado, 34-6; and a tie with Arizona, 24-24. Finished 9-1-1 before beating Michigan, 24-14, in the Rose Bowl game.