Gut-check time for Bruins after sour loss

PROVO, Utah -- Two games into the season for the Westwood footballers and instead of answers all we have after Saturday's debacle is a cloud of questions.

How in the name of Rick Neuheisel does UCLA bounce back from 59 to zip?

How do they rebound from as soul-sucking a loss as has been suffered by the Bruins since the days of the Great Depression?

Will they be able to step past this defeat and summon the guts they showed in their first-game upset of Tennessee? Or will this cause a crisis of confidence that brings about a painful crumble and a season to forget?

When Brigham Young was finished with them Saturday, Bruins players and coaches looked as shocked as if they'd just taken the field against a team of ghosts. But to their credit, even if they had no other choice, they also firmly stuck to the postgame mantra handed out by their new head coach. Instead of throwing a fit, Neuheisel sought some perspective.

"It's game two of our season; we've got 10 more left," he calmly assured anyone who would listen. "We have to focus on what's broken. . . . We have to challenge our guys to bring a great effort . . . all of us have to get better."

That's an understatement.

This was a game in which BYU's players came out like wild-eyed warriors with fire in their guts. The Bruins, by contrast, looked like doe-eyed kids with sour tummies from eating too many late-night sweets.

The offense was simply inept. The defense trotted to the field with the confidence that came from holding off Tennessee. Then BYU romped downfield on an 11-play opening drive that featured six-for-six passing from Cougars' quarterback Max Hall, a drive he ended with the first of his seven touchdown tosses. (No, that's not a typo: Hall finished with seven and could have had 10 if he'd not been pulled early in the second half.)

All game long, every time you looked up it seemed a white-helmeted BYU player was either wide open, pouncing on a fumble, or easing into the end zone. With 14 minutes 30 seconds left in the second quarter, BYU was already up, 21-0. Roughly five minutes later, it was Brigham Young 35, UCLA nothing whatsoever. Of course it didn't stop there, but no need piling on.

"I don't even have the words to describe it," Alterraun Verner said, standing in a hushed locker room half an hour after the game.

Verner is usually a defensive dynamo, but he suffered through what generously can be described as a rough afternoon. He thought for a moment and then offered a single-word description of the afternoon: "Unexpected?"