PASADENA, Calif. — With 15 minutes left in a close contest at UCLA on Saturday, the players of the Oregon football team, per tradition, each held up four fingers as they trotted onto the field.
For the second -straight year, that fourth quarter held the key to the game and, for the second-straight year, Oregon prevailed when UCLA kicker Chris Griffith missed a long field goal.
“I’m amazed it came down to the same storyline as last year,” Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti said.
Oregon (6-0, 2-0 Pacific-10 Conference) beat UCLA (5-2, 1-1), 31-30 in front of 68,882 fans at the Rose Bowl. The win moved the Ducks to sixth in both polls, gave them control of the young Pac-10 race and sent a message, according to the Oregon players, to the rest of the conference that Oregon won’t easily relinquish its conference crown.
“People feel we haven’t been tested this season, so this was huge for our program,” Duck tailback Onterrio Smith said.
Smith was one of many offensive stars for Oregon on Saturday, but it was really the UCLA offense that lit up the Rose Bowl for most of the game. The Bruins used big plays to put them up 7-0, 14-7 and 30-24 as Oregon was forced to play catch-up football for much of the contest.
But the game turned on three key plays — plays that fall under the “small stuff” category that Bellotti stresses so often with his team. The first was a 59-yard field goal by Jared Siegel on the last play of the half that boosted the Ducks into halftime. The second was a blocked extra point by Oregon’s Haloti Ngata on UCLA’s last touchdown with 7:28 left in the third quarter. The third was an attempt at a fake field goal by UCLA in the fourth quarter that was stopped short of the first down.
No play was as big as Griffith’s field goal, a play that Oregon linebacker David Moretti said gave him “deja vu.”
The drive itself was similar to last season’s game-ending Bruin drive, when UCLA coach Bob Toledo made several questionable play calls to keep his team from getting closer to the endzone. Saturday, the Bruins started their drive from their own 20-yard line with 5:54 left and slowly marched down the field. UCLA halfback Tyler Ebell had runs for eight, nine and five yards. Halfback Akil Harris had an 11-yard rush. Bruin quarterback Cory Paus hit Craig Bragg — who finished the game with nine catches for 230 yards and three touchdowns — for gains of 12 and 10 yards.
With less than three minutes left, UCLA had a first-and-10 from the Oregon 25. Toledo ran a play for Ebell up the middle, where he was stuffed by Duck free safety Rasuli Webster. Ebell ran around the right end, where he was stopped by Webster again for a loss of three yards. Paus threw incomplete for Bragg on a swing pass to the left side. That set up the 46-yard field goal attempt, which Griffith booted wide left.
“They were getting close, but we knew if we kept it to a 40-something-yard field goal, we had a chance,” Moretti said.
After Griffith’s miss, the Ducks needed only to gain one first down to run out the clock. Smith broke for runs of six and 10 yards to put the game out of UCLA’s reach.
Smith didn’t have a touchdown on the day but rushed for 154 yards. It was his sixth-straight game with more than 100 yards, breaking the Oregon record in that category.
But Smith left the scoring to his backup and the Duck receivers on Saturday. Terrence Whitehead rushed for a 37-yard touchdown to tie the score at 14 early in the second quarter, George Wrighster caught the first Oregon touchdown pass in the first quarter and Keenan Howry accounted for two touchdowns.
Howry’s first touchdown was also his first punt return of the year, a 79-yard sprint in the second quarter, and may signify his return to form from last year, when he returned two punts for touchdowns.
Oregon continues the defense of its Pac-10 crown Saturday when it hosts Arizona State at Autzen Stadium.
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