A Fierce Game Between Friends : College football: Pals Donahue and Tomey face off as UCLA visits Arizona.

They are three coaches as close as any others in football, Dick Tomey said. For 51 weeks, they talk, sharing problems, seeking solutions.

In the 52nd week, they try to beat each other’s brains in.

UCLA Coach Terry Donahue, Oregon’s Rich Brooks and Arizona’s Tomey go a long way back, Donahue and Tomey to the staffs of Pepper Rodgers and Dick Vermeil at UCLA. When Donahue became the Bruins’ coach in 1976, he named Tomey his defensive coordinator and Brooks the linebacker coach.

They have scattered since, but are never farther away than a telephone call.

The calls to Donahue lately have been sympathetic.

The sympathy will be suspended today, however, when Tomey’s Arizona team plays host to UCLA.

“I hate to see anybody go through that, particularly a friend,” said Tomey of Donahue and the Bruins’ five-game losing streak. “I know, however, that Rich was going through that a few weeks ago, and I know it turns around quickly. And Terry has the capability to last and turn those things around.”

Brooks and Oregon lost to Hawaii and Utah and had a 1-2 record before beating Iowa and USC to right things.

“We’ve been through that here, and I think we all have empathy for each other when we go through those kinds of times because they happen to everybody,” said Tomey, who had a 4-7 record in 1991. “Terry will have his team back playing well again soon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this week.”

Tomey’s best defensive player, end Tedy Bruschi, is not as sympathetic.

“I remember last year,” he said. “I remember being 7-0 and then losing to UCLA and then everything fell apart. I will not forget that this Saturday.”

It’s a different UCLA team, but Arizona is similar to the one that went 10-2, including a Fiesta Bowl shutout of Miami. The 14th-ranked Wildcats (5-1, 3-0 in the Pacific 10) are in control of the Rose Bowl race and in UCLA (2-5, 0-4) are facing a team that would appear to be a bump in the road to Pasadena.

You could cast the Bruins in the role of spoilers, but it’s difficult to cast them in any role except that of a team trying to avoid its first six-game losing streak since 1945.

“Our problem right now is that we need to worry about ourselves,” said Donahue.

“We need to worry about how we’re functioning, how we’re executing, what we’re doing, as much as what the other team is doing. . . . What we’re doing as coaches is analyzing how to keep our players from making so many mistakes. Are things too complicated? Are the kids not concentrating? Are there too many young guys? Why can’t we execute?

“That’s more of a concern than, say, Arizona or anybody else we’re playing right now.”

The analysis has involved a potential quarterback change, a sophomore for a senior who led the Bruins to the Rose Bowl last year.

Wayne Cook will start for the eighth week in a row, but he will be on a short leash and Donahue said he would not hesitate to pull it, sending in sophomore Ryan Fien.

Cook passed for 270 yards and a touchdown last week and ranks second in the Pac-10 in passing yardage with 1,362. But the offense has become mistake-prone, and has shown a tendency to break down near the goal line. Fien has passed for 176 yards but has a tendency to throw interceptions.

Cook gets the call largely because he engineered a 37-17 victory last season against Arizona, throwing two touchdown passes, and because Arizona’s defense is considered too tough to give Fien his first start.

The breakdowns have revealed another problem that Donahue is still wrestling with: field goal kicking. Sophomore Bjorn Merten has made only four of his last 11 and missed a 32-yarder last week in a 23-14 loss to Oregon State.

Walk-on Greg Andrasick, who has yet to kick in a college game, has competed with Merten all week and the decision will not be made until coaches have seen both warm up today.

Whether Cook or Fien will have J.J. Stokes to throw to is also questionable.

Stokes, who has played in parts of two games all season because of a thigh bruise, has returned to practice, but may not be ready to play.

In Arizona, the Bruins will play a team that was challenged once in its first four games, beating Georgia Tech, 19-13, in its opener, then coasting past New Mexico State, Stanford and Oregon State.

Then came Colorado State, and the Wildcats say overconfidence led to their 21-15 defeat.

Last Saturday, in a hotel in Moscow, Ida., just down the road from Pullman, Wash., Tomey called in his players, one at a time, before they were to play Washington State.

“He didn’t say much,” said defensive tackle Chuck Osborne, Arizona’s sack leader with seven. “He didn’t say anything to some people. I think he just wanted to look us in the eyes, to see if we were ready to play.”

The defense, Arizona’s pride and joy, was ready and the Wildcats won, 10-7.

“Anybody who didn’t like that game doesn’t like football,” said Tomey, whose idea of winning involves defense, the kicking game and keeping the offense from screwing things up. “It was a real war. I think it renewed our sense of pride and the knowledge of what it takes to win.”

That knowledge has escaped UCLA, whose coach will receive a phone call next week from an old friend. Who extends whom the sympathy will be determined today.

UCLA BRUINS TODAY’S GAME

* Opponent: Arizona Wildcats.

* Site: Arizona Stadium, Tucson.

* Time: 12:30 p.m.

* Records: UCLA 2-5, 0-4 in Pac-10; Arizona 5-1, 3-0.

* Radio: XTRA (690).

* TV: Channel 7.