Moore’s former team shuts him down

For the second year in a row, Oregon State quarterback Matt Moore was humbled by his former UCLA teammates, who forced him into three fumbles and held him to only 175 yards passing without a touchdown in the Bruins’ 25-7 victory Saturday at the Rose Bowl.

Moore, who transferred from UCLA in 2003, had a rough day against the Bruins last year when they defeated Oregon State, 51-28.

“Credit UCLA, they played well,” said Moore, who had two intercepted passes last year against the Bruins. “They’re a good football team but we did not take advantage of the one mistake they made and we had too many. We didn’t play up to our abilities and that hurts.”

Added Oregon State Coach Mike Riley, whose team’s four-game winning streak ended: “That was a terribly disappointing game. We’ve been on a good run and have been playing some good football. We just turned the ball over too many times to win.”

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Cornerback Trey Brown on UCLA’s improved defensive play against Oregon State: “We’ve been fighting for so long and giving it our all throughout the season. Things hadn’t gone our way the last couple of games, but we came out and took the ‘W’ today. It was great to get that done today.”

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Coach Karl Dorrell on sophomore quarterback Patrick Cowan, who passed for two touchdowns in the second half: “We didn’t seem to have any offensive rhythm, especially in the second quarter. We just wanted to get him settled down at halftime. We just worked him through the game by lining up the plays we wanted to call in the second half.”

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Quarterback Ben Olson, sidelined since Oct. 7 because of a knee injury, was in uniform on Saturday but did not play.... Safeties Dennis Keyes and Chris Horton led UCLA in tackles with eight each.... Defensive tackle Brigham Harwell finished with six, including three for loss.

-- Lonnie White

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It wasn’t the greatest defensive stand UCLA has had.

Oregon State moved the ball from its 17-yard line to UCLA’s 13, 70 yards of grinding offense filled with seven- and eight- and nine-yard runs.

The Beavers held the football for 16 plays and 9:05 early in the third quarter but at the end kicker Alexis Serna of Fontana missed a 30-yard field goal.

“That’s real tough,” UCLA defensive tackle Kevin Brown said. “We didn’t play exceptional but it does take a lot out of a team to have the ball so long and get nothing. It fired us up too, I think.”

Before the missed field goal, Moore had completed a desperate one-yard screen pass to running back Clinton Polk.

“That was a letdown,” said Moore. “We did so well on that drive. It was tough to get nothing out of it.”

UCLA had gone ahead for the first time in the game, 13-7, before the Beavers started the long, futile drive. “It seemed like momentum was coming back to us on that drive,” Moore said. “It was just a frustrating way to end it.”

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UCLA kicker Justin Medlock was four for four on his field-goal attempts (40, 42, 25 and 24 yards) and all six of his kickoffs went into the end zone. This was the fourth time in his career and third time this year that Medlock made four field goals in a game. Added to his one point-after kick, Medlock scored 13 points and moved into second place on the Bruins’ all-time scoring list with 335 points. John Lee is first with 390 points. Medlock has 23 field goals this season, again second to Lee (32 in 1984) in a single season.

-- Diane Pucin