Bruins won’t be looking back

A ratings boost?

Or a step closer to cancellation?

Those are the fall season programming possibilities for UCLA when it plays Washington at the Rose Bowl tonight. Whether the Bruins are ready-for-prime-time players, well, that depends on whether they trot out a rerun.

UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell by midweek was done dissecting his team’s sitcom-like performance last Saturday, when his Bruins demonstrated their version of stepping on a rake and getting smacked in the face during a 44-6 loss to Utah.

Bruins players, though, have the moment TiVoed in their hearts and minds, and no editing can remove it.

“We need this,” UCLA linebacker Christian Taylor said, then paused before adding, “for a lot of reasons.”

Let us count the ways.

The Bruins sit atop the Pacific 10 Conference standings by virtue of opening the season with a conference game -- woeful Stanford.

UCLA and Washington enter tonight’s game with 2-1 records. Both are coming off losses.

Yet, while the Huskies had a peace-with-honor moment in a 33-14 setback against Ohio State last week, the Bruins ran up the white flag against the Utes in a game where their BCS standing stood at Barely Conscious State.

The previously 11th-ranked Bruins were dumped from the Associated Press poll and Dorrell was ready to move on by Wednesday, saying, “I’m done talking about Utah. I’m focused on Washington.”

But he, like many under his command, will hang on to the lesson, as the wound still stings as if it had been dipped in the Great Salt Lake.

“It’s not going to be totally out of your system until you come out and have a good showing,” defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker said.

Walker can be excused for letting things fester. The 44 points were the most his defense has surrendered since he was hired -- Florida State capped its 44-27 Emerald Bowl victory over the Bruins by returning an interception for a touchdown.

“I think this game is going to reveal ourselves,” Walker said. “The first two games [the defense was] OK. We hadn’t hit our stride but played well enough. Then to have that kind of game. . . . I still have a hangover.”

Standing in the way of a remedy are the Huskies, quarterback Jake Locker in particular.

Locker replaced the dangerous Isaiah Stanback, whose ad-libs on offense rallied the Huskies from a 16-0 deficit to a 29-19 victory over the Bruins last season. He then nearly engineered an upset of USC. The scary part is that Washington Coach Tyrone Willingham thinks Locker is a little better, if for no other reason than he hasn’t been a learn-on-the-job quarterback.

“I think they are similar, but Jake has had a little better high school training in terms of being a quarterback,” Willingham said. “It was unfortunate for Isaiah that he was still learning [the position] when we had him. Jake brings a lot of that to the table, so it makes his pace accelerated.”

Locker’s 107.26 passing efficiency doesn’t put him in the top 10 among Pac-10 quarterbacks, but he is the conference’s seventh-best rusher, averaging 89 yards. His effectiveness, though, comes from improvisation.

“I haven’t seen a young guy like that running around probably since Michael Vick, when he broke into college ball,” Walker said. “I’m not saying he’s Michael Vick, but he definitely has those intangibles.”

That could be put aside as hyperbole from a coach who has to face Locker, but even those who have him in the rearview mirror rave.

“He’s a tremendous athlete and very fast, exceedingly fast,” Ohio State linebacker James Laurinaitis said. “You see him on film and you see he’s fast, but you see him in person and you have to really adjust your angle on him.”

Locker, a sophomore, had 102 yards rushing and 153 yards passing against Ohio State, though he also had three passes intercepted. He has personally accounted for five of the Huskies’ 11 touchdowns this season and has caused some insomnia for opposing coaches.

Said Walker: “You have to worry about him, but they have 10 other guys you have to account for too. If you could put all 11 defenders on him, we’d be OK. I’d sleep better at night.”

So the plan is simple.

“I don’t know if you can really stop him,” Dorrell said. “You don’t want him to make too many big plays, whether it’s through the air or with the feet.”

As far as quarterback concerns go, the Bruins have their own. They send Patrick Cowan out as the leading man, replacing Ben Olson, who has concussion-like symptoms.

Cowan’s last starting appearance at the Rose Bowl was in the Bruins 13-9 victory over USC. Cowan, though, has just recovered from a partially torn hamstring, and whether that will limit the mobility that made him an effective starter at times last season is still to be seen.

“I just got back in the groove,” Cowan said. “It’s fun getting back in the groove.”

That is something the Bruins would like to be saying late tonight.

“The feeling is that last week is already behind us,” cornerback Trey Brown said. “That’s over and done with. But we’re going to take what we learned in that game and apply it to this game. This game is definitely an important one.”

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chris.foster@latimes.com