Monday, January 11, 1999
Defense run over by Wisconsin, Miami
FOOTBALL: Injuries, poor play hurt Bruins as star backs trample
over hapless tacklers
By Vytas Mazeika
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Football is a game of numbers, and for the UCLA defense, the
numbers didn’t look good.
Eight times in the first 10 games of the 1998 campaign, a
tailback surpassed the 100-yard barrier against the Bruins (10-2).
But while battling through injuries and inexperience, the UCLA
defense did not break in those games.
Then came Miami’s Edgerrin James and Wisconsin’s Ron Dayne.
James rushed for 299 yards on 39 carries to set a record by a Bruin
opponent. Then Dayne fell one yard short of the Rose Bowl record
with 246 yards in the New Year’s Day game.
"I’m tired of losing," UCLA defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti
said. "I’m upset that we lost (the Rose Bowl) because I thought we
were a team that could’ve won this football game. And we didn’t get
it done on defense. Not on offense, on defense."
James and Dayne were the two players most responsible for
derailing UCLA’s championship aspirations. But all season long,
critics referred to the defense as the reason why the Bruins did
not deserve to be in the Fiesta Bowl.
Not a single national title team in NCAA history ever had a
defense ranked as poorly as UCLA’s. Therefore, when faced with the
challenge of creating a game plan against the Bruins, Wisconsin
head coach Barry Alvarez knew trying to stop Cade McNown and the
UCLA offense was not the way to go.
"We put the onus on the offense in this ball game, which we’d
never done before this year," Alvarez said. "We said ‘You have to
move the football, you’re going to have to put points on the board
and we’re going to have to start fast.’ Those were things that we
hadn’t done before and we did them because we had so much respect
for UCLA and its offense."
What Alvarez didn’t mention was his lack of respect for the UCLA
defense.
Out of Houston, Stanford and Arizona (the three teams against
which UCLA didn’t allow a 100-yard rusher), only the Wildcats had a
legitimate running back in Trung Candidate.
The game plan devised by Alvarez asked only one thing out of his
team: run the ball over and over and over again. Not only did the
Badgers follow their game plan, Dayne and his counterparts
dominated the trenches.
"Our offensive line executed and just played better," Badger
quarterback Mike Samuel said. "You have to give a lot of credit to
UCLA too. They came out and played tough and tried to hang in
there. But I thought that for four quarters, we just wore them
down."
The knock on Dayne entering the Rose Bowl was how he disappeared
in big games.
Considering that Dayne played with a fracture and still averaged
9.1 yards per carry, dissenters to his abilities should be
non-existent now. In fact, Dayne steamrolled through the UCLA
defense with such apparent ease that one reporter asked if he saw
Bruin defenders shying away from a head-on collision.
"My line was blocking good and every hole I saw, that’s what I
was running to," Dayne said. "I wasn’t looking at those guys to see
if they were trying to dodge a tackle."
According to Aliotti, Dayne ranks third amongst the plethora of
talented tailbacks UCLA has faced this season. No. 1 was Texas’
Ricky Williams, likely one of the top two picks in the upcoming NFL
draft. Second is Oregon’s Reuben Droughns, who got 172 yards
against UCLA – even with a broken leg .
But Dayne and James had the most productive days against the
Bruins, largely due to injuries. On the first defensive play
against Miami, UCLA senior linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo sprained
his left knee. Without Ayanbadejo, one of only two seniors on
defense, James and the Hurricanes created chaos for UCLA.
Then late in the first half against Wisconsin, senior safety
Larry Atkins, the other senior on the UCLA defense, sprained his
knee.
Along with other nagging injuries, the Bruins just didn’t have
the personnel to stop Dayne.
"We have now lost two really big games in a row because our
defense has constantly been through adversity," UCLA cornerback
Marques Anderson said. "Larry’s loss really hurt us because he is
the leader in everything, but the same thing happened in Miami when
Brendon went down. Someone just has to step up."
UCLA did have a chance to win in the second half of both losses.
Aliotti felt that his defense should have stopped Dayne on New
Year’s Day, even with a depleted line-up. As it became more and
more obvious that Wisconsin was too dominant on the ground, Aliotti
substituted in any player who could give UCLA a boost.
Defensive end Vae Tata played. So did defensive end Jayson Brown
and linebacker Billy Pieper. Aliotti said he was trying to rally
the troops and get some effort.
Due to the injuries, 232-pound linebacker Cheyane Caldwell even
played at nose guard at one point. At another point the Bruins had
three true freshmen on the defense.
"I’m frustrated because I believe we could’ve stopped them,"
Nick Aliotti said. "Our whole game plan was geared to stop them. We
had 5,000 people in the box to stop them, and we didn’t stop
them."
The numbers just didn’t go UCLA’s way.
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