Bruins to embrace challenge of higher expectations

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LOS ANGELES -- Whether coach Rick Neuheisel likes it or not -- and he doesn't -- UCLA's football Bruins will have a low profile this week. While much of the nation -- and, in Southern California, all but the powder blue faithful -- will be focused on Saturday's USC-Ohio State game, the Bruins' game at No. 18 BYU earlier in the day carries just as intriguing a story line. The plot: Are these Bruins really different from the UCLA teams that have preceded them? Or will this be yet another occasion where they follow a stunner with a stinker? That was, of course, the hallmark of the Karl Dorrell era, and the unexplainable losses eventually outweighed the impressive victories and led to his dismissal. The Neuheisel era, we've been promised, will be different. These Bruins will embrace the challenge and create their own aura, we've been told. Well, this is where it will have to start. The Bruins will be visiting the same state where they collapsed so dramatically last September. They brought a 2-0 record and No. 11 ranking to Salt Lake City last Sept. 15 and slinked away, reputation, confidence and self-esteem in tatters, after a 44-6 loss to Utah. Now, after momentarily capturing our imagination with that thrilling Labor Day comeback to beat Tennessee, Neuheisel's Bruins get down to the process of building something that can last. A victory over the Cougars, or at least a solid performance -- heck, anything better than the mail-it-in, minds-on-seemingly-anything-else performances we've seen so often from UCLA teams in recent years -- would tell us things truly are different in Westwood. "We said (before Tennessee), win or lose, we'd see how good our team is," defensive lineman Brigham Harwell said Monday. "We walked out of that stadium thinking that we're a really good team." But, he added, "guys know about the past. Last year the loss to Utah started our season downhill. We know we have to come out strong this year. We can't have a good game one week and fall off the next. I've talked to guys and told them, 'You know, you can't take any game for granted.' " The Tennessee victory probably foiled any grand strategy to tamp down the public's expectations. But if it also got the players feeling too good about themselves, that's dangerous territory -- territory that Bruins teams have explored far too often. "The enthusiasm is wonderful for our fans," Neuheisel said. "If they could bring that with them on the plane to Utah, that would be terrific. "But for the players, they have to use that enthusiasm as fuel -- fuel for doing the work necessary to deal with this caliber of opponent, to have the maturity to go on the road and play within yourself and not get distracted by all the things around you, to have the discipline to play a team that's won 24 of its last 28 and is a very mature team. "These are tall tasks. But our kids, having tasted that success that came from the Tennessee victory, are hungry and eager to taste it again and willing to do the things necessary to do so. It's up to us as the coaching staff to give them the recipe." UCLA's players at least had a few extra days to get Tennessee out of their systems thanks to last week's bye. Harwell said they'd done so by Wednesday. Yet any coach charged with preparing and motivating a collection of 18- to 22-year-olds will tell you their behavior can be tough to predict. Often, it comes down to pushing the right buttons. The stoic Dorrell never did figure it out. In contrast, the image of Neuheisel all but getting inside quarterback Kevin Craft's facemask during the first half on Labor Day -- and Craft responding with a second half for the ages -- reinforces the feeling that this is the right coach in the right place. We'll find out more Saturday ... at least those of us who are watching. In a community that also features the No. 1 college football team in the land, one baseball team in a pennant race and another already headed for the postseason, plus Kobe Bryant's impending pinkie surgery, the Bruins could find themselves under the radar for a while. "It's LA, baby," Neuheisel said. "We're going to be where we're going to be. But under the radar is not anything I've envisioned for UCLA. Those 103 national championships in there (pointing toward the school's Hall of Fame), I don't think those are under the radar. "I'm not trying to be flamboyant here. If we're the undercard (to USC-Ohio State) this week, OK, so be it. But that's not where we want to be. We don't take any pleasure in being the undercard." And Neuheisel knows, as well as anyone, that the best way to reach main event status is to win. Consistently.(Contact Jim Alexander at jalexander@PE.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)