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Battle of The Fallen

Expectations are always high for the UCLA football team.

Expectations were higher this year for the Arizona football team than ever before.

And eight games into the season, both teams have not even come close to meeting those expectations.

"I just want to win, to get another W under my belt," UA junior linebacker Antonio Pierce said. "It doesn't matter about the Rose Bowl and the Holiday Bowl, the rankings, none of that. We just want to go out and play. We had a lot of goals this season and we haven't met any of them."

UA and UCLA meet tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in a game that has far less significance than when it first appeared on the Pacific 10 Conference schedule.

Arizona (5-3 overall, 2-2 Pac-10) comes in off a crushing home loss to Oregon 44-41 last Saturday while the Bruins (3-5, 1-4) come in off their worst loss in 69 years, a 55-7 drubbing at Oregon State.

"This is a game of both teams trying to get back on track," UA senior wide receiver Dennis Northcutt said. "We came off a hard, close loss that really hurt us. We felt we could have won that game. They're coming off a blow-out and they feel the team they put on the field wasn't them. We're trying to prove we're a good team. It's going to be a very big, emotional game."

Both teams have had inconsistent offenses and lackluster defenses this season which have knocked them from their usual perches atop the Pac-10 standings.

UCLA is giving up 30.1 points and 454.6 yards per game while the Wildcats are giving up 31.8 points and 384 yards per game.

That doesn't mean the Bruins' defense doesn't have the UA offense at least somewhat worried.

"They like to blitz a lot and they do a really good job of getting to the quarterback," UA senior quarterback Keith Smith said. "They've got 16 sacks this year. They'll bring it from anywhere. And the Pac-10 is hard. You can't just say because they're struggling you can relax. You have to come out and play your football game."

Offensively, Arizona has been on a bit of a roll of late, with 2,155 yards over its last four games. But UA head coach Dick Tomey knows that the 552 yards the Wildcats had against Oregon weren't accumulated the way he would have liked.

"Well, the deceptive thing is that we had a lot of big plays, and when we didn't have a big play, we didn't have enough little plays," he said. "We had some great rushing plays, but we didn't really have a great day rushing."

Arizona only had 28 net yards rushing if the four long runs by senior tailback Trung Canidate (60 yards), senior wide receiver Dennis Northcutt (80 yards), junior quarterback Ortege Jenkins (65 yards) and Smith (49 yards) are subtracted from the total of 282 net yards that Arizona had.

For Canidate, a shot at revenge against the only team to beat Arizona last year is secondary to just winning, period.

"You know it's a different season this year," he said. "Right now all we're trying to do is get a little redemption for last week. Last year is in the past, just like last year's team is in the past."

Canidate doesn't expect UCLA to be focused on its 52-28 win in Tucson last season, either. He said the Bruins will be more focused on trying to put the game at OSU out of mind.

"Anytime you come out and you play a team that's been beat the way they've been beat, of course they're going to be upset," he said. "But I don't look at things like that, I look at it from what's our team doing. They knew their game was over in the first quarter. We spent a lot more energy on our game and to have it taken away from us like that ... I'm concerned about how the Wildcats are doing."

Northcutt agreed with Canidate, saying the Wildcats are focused solely on improving themselves.

"We're trying to get back on track and the only way you can do that is prove yourselves," he said. "Nobody is going to give you nothing. I don't expect that from the writers and reporters. I don't expect you to give us nothing. We should earn everything we get. And that's all I've ever wanted to do is to earn what I get."