Friday, October 31, 1997
Football preview
By Mark Dittmer
Daily Bruin Staff
This all seems very familiar.
Stanford plays UCLA in an early November contest, with its season on the line. The Cardinal enters the game fresh off consecutive losses, needing a win over the Bruins to turn its season around.
It's the storyline this week, as the No. 12 Bruins (6-2, 4-1 Pac-10) visit Stanford Saturday. And it was the storyline last year, when a struggling Stanford squad came to the Rose Bowl in 1996, seemingly on its way to the cellar of the Pac-10.
However, when Saturday's game is over, UCLA hopes to have eradicated any feeling of familiarity.
"Last year when they came to the Rose Bowl, they ended up leaving with a 21-20 win," UCLA head coach Bob Toledo said. "Hopefully it won't be deja vu."
Stanford (4-3, 2-2), meanwhile, is hoping its entire November feels like deja vu.
Last year, Stanford staggered into the month with a 2-5 record, having been slaughtered by Arizona State in its last October contest.
But the Cardinal wouldn't lose again. It went on to win its last four regular-season games, finish third in the Pac-10 with a 6-5 overall record, qualify for the Sun Bowl and proceed to crush Michigan State in the New Year's Eve contest, 38-0.
If it hadn't been for its one-point victory over UCLA on Nov. 2 of last year, none of that would have happened. The Cardinal would have finished the season 5-6 at best, and the Bruins may have taken Stanford's Sun Bowl spot.
"I don't think you judge success until you get to the end of the journey," Stanford head coach Tyrone Willingham said. "We've got four more games to go, four more very critical games for us."
Willingham said that on Monday, though he just as easily could have said it last year. For the second straight year, Willingham is under pressure heading into the month of November.
While this year's Cardinal is in better shape than it was last year at this point, the team also faces heightened expectations. Stanford opened the season ranked 17th in the nation, the second-highest ranking for a Pac-10 team. Early on, the Cardinal was living up to its billing, winning four of its first five, including a 33-15 romp over Notre Dame.
"They were picked to be a contender for the championship, along with Washington," Toledo said. "Rightfully so, because they've got a lot of talent."
It's talent that first began to surface when the Cardinal began its win streak with the win over the Bruins last year. Chad Hutchinson, who had just won the starting spot earlier that year and who had performed erratically, began in the latter half of the season to assert himself as one of the nation's most promising quarterbacks.
Against UCLA, he completed 22 of 32 passes for 268 yards and two touchdowns, including a game-winning 10-yard pass to receiver Brian Manning with 58 seconds to play.
Receiver Troy Walters was sixth on the team in catches going into that game, in which he caught eight passes for 114 yards and a touchdown. Since then he has blossomed into a star who this year is second in the conference in receptions.
Defensive end Kailee Wong and linebacker Chris Draft also emerged, and Stanford's five-game win streak equated to a hot start this year.
Then came a loss to the struggling Arizona Wildcats (3-5, 1-4), the week before the Pac-10 champion Arizona State Sun Devils were to pay the Cardinal a visit. The Devils whipped Stanford 31-14.
"Championships are won in November," Toledo said. "This November's going to be very, very exciting for all the fans and all the players."
Toledo hopes that this year it is UCLA that owns November, not Stanford. And what better date to stake claims to that ownership than Nov. 1, against Stanford, the reigning champions of November?