RIPPLE EFFECT : Lake Isn’t Leading the Bruins in Sacks This Year, but He’s Making an Impact

Carnell Lake’s most vivid memory of UCLA’s 17-13 loss to USC last season is of the smile on the face of USC quarterback Rodney Peete, mocking the Bruin linebacker and his teammates as the clock wound down on their unsuccessful bid for the Rose Bowl berth.

“Especially when you’re losing, that smile just eats away at you,” Lake said. “When you see him off the field, it’s warm and comforting. But on the field, it’s spooky. It seems like he knows what’s going to happen.

“You could get wrapped up in his smile and it could throw you off your game, especially when you don’t get a sack on him and he’s just smiling as he’s running past you.

“That’s got to be the worst feeling in the world.”

Lake, who led the Bruins last season with 13 sacks and made 19 tackles behind the line of scrimmage, didn’t get his arms around the elusive Peete.

“I got my fingertips on him, but that was about it,” he said. “I was diving all day.”

Lake has done more diving than sacking this season, too.

After making 94 tackles in 12 games last season, when he was runner-up to safety Chuck Cecil of Arizona in voting for defensive player of the year in the Pacific 10 Conference, he has made 69 tackles in 10 games this season and has only 4 1/2 sacks. Six Bruins have more tackles, including nose guard Jim Wahler, who missed a game.

UCLA assistant Bob Field said that offensive coordinators are more conscious of Lake, which has led to decreased statistical production from a player whose 4.37 speed in the 40-yard dash makes him one of the fastest linebackers in college football.

“When the season started a year ago, people really were not aware of Carnell Lake that much and he got off to a fast start,” said Field, who coaches UCLA’s outside linebackers. “He had some very impressive numbers early.

“He came up with a lot of big plays in our first 7 or 8 games, but by the end of the season people were more aware of him and they started to do things, in terms of their pass protection, to nullify his effectiveness as a rusher.”

In other words, Lake made a reputation for himself that was difficult to maintain, especially since he is considered small for a linebacker at 6 feet 1/2 inch and 205 pounds. Used extensively in pass coverage this season, he almost certainly will be moved into the secondary in the National Football League, where scouts project him as a middle-round draft pick.

Lake, though, is no less important to the defense, Field said. It’s just that his contributions don’t always show up in the statistics.

As an example, he pointed to last week’s game against Stanford, in which tackle Mike Lodish scored the decisive touchdown in a 27-17 victory, stealing the ball from Cardinal quarterback Brian Johnson and running 17 yards for a third-quarter score.

It was the play of the game, and Lake made it possible, Field said.

Lake aligned himself about a yard outside Lodish, who lined up at left tackle opposite the weak side of Stanford’s offensive line.

As the ball was snapped, Lake bore down quickly at a sharp angle to his right, colliding with the Cardinal tackle and knocking him into the guard as Lodish looped around behind.

Untouched, Lodish charged Johnson, who stepped up in the pocket to avoid the lineman. As the quarterback did so, Lodish reached out and batted the ball out of his hand, plucking it out of the air before it hit the ground and lumbering into the end zone.

Lake made the play, but Lodish made the 11 o’clock news.

Last season, it was Lake who made the late-night highlights.

But the easygoing Lake seems unfazed by this turn of events. As one reporter once wrote of him, “barely a ripple disturbs the surface of this Lake.”

He arrived at UCLA as a running back, having rushed for 956 yards and 12 touchdowns in only 4 1/2 games as a senior at Culver City High before dislocating his right elbow while throwing a halfback option pass. Gaston Green and Eric Ball were already in the Bruin fold, but Lake wanted to challenge himself against the best, he said.

He never got a chance.

As he ran through a battery of drills in his first few days on campus, the Bruin assistants argued about who would get him.

He wound up at linebacker because that was the Bruins’ greatest need. Coach Terry Donahue allowed him to return kickoffs as a sophomore--he averaged 20.5 yards a return--and asked him in the spring of 1987 if he would like to try fullback.

Lake declined.

“Defenses are able to let it loose,” he said. “It seems like there’s more excitement on defense. You can be more into the game because you can be wild.”

Wildness seems uncharacteristic of the mild-mannered Lake, who moved back home to Inglewood 2 years ago to live with his mother and stepfather, Ingrid and Charles Fields, because the dorms had become too noisy.

A serious student, Lake and 10 other recipients were named last week as winners of scholar-athlete awards from the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame. The group will be honored next month at a dinner in New York City.

Lake is a political science major, having changed from economics because he found numbers too confining. He prefers to interact with people.

Toward that end, he gives motivational talks at schools near his home, explaining to kids the benefits of a college education.

A summer course in jurisprudence kindled an interest in law school, but his first priority is a career in the NFL.

“I think I’m having a pretty good year,” he said. “Obviously, I’d like to have a ton of statistics and be up there with all the other linebackers, but it hasn’t turned out that way.”

If this season is pretty good, how would he describe last season?

“Almost great,” he said.