Hocus, Pocus, These Guys Are Focused

Could it be that the radio ad is wrong? Could it be that the “best team in town the last six years” might just be, at least at the moment, the best team in the country?

Could it be that UCLA, coached by college football’s version of Merlin the Magician, is better than the Michigan/Florida State/Nebraska triumvirate of unbeaten teams that currently rules the top of the national polls?

Could it be that a team that has already lost two games, to Tennessee and to a team from Pullman, Wash., actually has the best talent and ability of any team in the good ol’ USA?

Yup, it sure could.

UCLA made its case, 52-28, in the Rose Bowl Saturday, before a sellout crowd of 85,697, when it confused and crushed a Washington team that had been ranked No. 13 in the Associated Press going into the game.

UCLA, ranked ninth by the Associated Press, is on an eight-game winning streak after a 0-2 start, and in that streak the Bruins have scored 66 points twice--against Texas and Houston--and now 52 against a team that was the preseason choice in a handful of magazines to take the national title.

Skip Hicks, the Bruins’ do-everything star running back, who ran for 147 yards, caught passes for another 106, scored four touchdowns and would have taped ankles if he could have found the time, addressed the “Who’s No. 1?” issue afterward.

“I feel that way, and the whole team feels that way, too,” he said. “We are playing with so much confidence now, we feel we can beat any team in the country.”

Other opinions and measurements, past and projected, are also interesting.

Nebraska defeated Washington the third week of the season, 27-14, and Husky Coach Jim Lambright said UCLA was at least on a par. “They both beat us pretty good,” he said.

Florida State squeezed past what turned out to be an average USC team in the Trojans’ season opener, 14-7, and UCLA will be able to provide ample comparison fodder next Saturday in the traditional intra-city war at the Coliseum.

And Michigan? Rose Bowl matchup, anyone?

UCLA’s star linebacker, Brian Willmer, made his choice of New Year’s Day activity perfectly clear last week, even before the Washington romp.

“I want to play in the Rose Bowl, and I want Michigan,” he said.

UCLA, of course, is nowhere near a lock to even get to the Rose Bowl. It needs to defeat USC, never a lock no matter what the circumstance or year. And it needs a lot of help from its friends, one of them the Husky team it treated so roughly Saturday.

But whether the Bruins play locally or elsewhere on New Year’s Day, they have had a successful and entertaining run.

Coached by Bob Toledo, a former Terry Donahue assistant who got the head job when Athletic Director Pete Dalis correctly weathered the Rick Neuheisel-is-the-savior sentiment in press and alumni circles, the Bruins have given Southern California another edition of showtime.

Toledo, the architect of an offense that doesn’t so much run plays as pull them out of a hat, kept Washington cross-eyed Saturday with an occasional shotgun formation, with a double option play involving quarterback Cade McNown, with flanker screens left and right, with a shovel pass and with a halfback option pass.

Missing from Toledo’s bag of tricks this week was the swinging gate the Bruins ran a few games ago, where the entire line sets to the left of the center, who then becomes eligible for a pass.

Wide receiver Danny Farmer was asked if anybody on the team would be surprised if Toledo sent in the Statue of Liberty against the Trojans.

“Naw, not surprised in the least,” Farmer said.

Even Barbara Hedges, Washington’s athletic director, was impressed.

“Did you see all those different plays?” she asked, with genuine amazement.

If this continues, there may become some confusion over just who is the real Wizard of Westwood.

Obviously, a team with two losses is unlikely to be No. 1 in the final vote, no matter what UCLA does in its last two games; and especially when some in the huge bloc of voters east of the Mississippi still think that football players in Southern California come to practice on a surfboard.

But the Bruins are certainly a team with a swagger these days, and they are helped along nicely by the knowledge that their guy on the sideline carries a magic wand.

And loves to use it.