Bruins Choose, Get Confused, Then Lose, 37-10 : UCLA: Messed-up play in fourth quarter is the key against Washington. Kaufman rushes for 227 yards.

SEATTLE — UCLA chose Door No. 1, but that was shut. Then the Bruins tried No. 2, which revolved, letting in noise and sending Sharmon Shah back out.

Because of the sound of the crowd Saturday in the horseshoe end of Husky Stadium, there was only confusion with 10 minutes to play.

The right answer was Door No. 3, a timeout.

UCLA failed to call it, and the decision cost dearly in a 37-10 loss to Washington, which was led by Napoleon Kaufman’s 227 yards rushing.

The Bruins had scored their first touchdown in six quarters, cutting their deficit to 20-10 on a 13-yard pass from Wayne Cook to Derek Ayers. UCLA held Washington on downs to start the fourth quarter, then got a break when punter Geoff Prince was ruled down on his 18-yard line after dropping to one knee to field a low snap.

In a game of momentum, still in doubt even though the Bruins had frittered away opportunity after opportunity, they moved to the Washington nine, facing fourth and inches.

Then came the quiz show.

The first option was the “freeze play,” called with the idea that Washington’s defense would jump off-side and give UCLA first and goal.

But the Huskies froze in place, leaving Cook to option No. 2.

He called for a handoff to Shah, but the crowd of 71,851 was going wild, and nobody was sure what to do.

Mike Flanagan snapped the ball, Cook handed it to Shah and the Huskies’ Richie Chambers came around the left side of UCLA’s line, unblocked and able to tackle Shah for a loss of three yards.

Garbage time then began, with Washington scoring 17 fourth-quarter points.

“I thought I had checked to a play that was OK,” Cook said. “We ran the play, but the only problem was that my backs thought I said something different and they were moving. The line was yelling their calls. So I was basically thinking I did the right thing and was running the right play, but everyone else didn’t hear it.

“We were rushed and it just didn’t work out right. Now that I look back on it, if I’m going to be the superhero and save the day, I’m going to call time out. As soon as I felt rushed, I should have called time out.”

“We should have called time out,” said offensive coordinator Bob Toledo, who had signaled the freeze play that began the series of events. “We, the coaches or Wayne or somebody, should have called time out. Don’t put the blame on him. We should have called it.”

How important was the play?

“If we had made it, I think the game would have been decided in the final minutes,” Coach Terry Donahue said.

Instead, Washington turned a close game into a rout.

That was made easier through the play of Kaufman, whose Heisman Trophy campaign postcard, mailed out Saturday night, included his 34 carries for 227 yards, best in his career; a 79-yard run, longest in his career, and a four-yard touchdown.

“To me the difference in the game was Napoleon Kaufman and the kicker” John Wales, said Donahue, who called Wales “Welsh” but had no trouble getting his idea across. “(Wales) was a major, major difference. (Washington quarterback Damon) Huard threw the ball well and played well, but more than anything the two things in the game that were a huge difference were Wales and Kaufman.”

Wales, who kicked three field goals, stood out even more in Donahue’s mind because his kicker, Bjorn Merten, continued to struggle. Merten missed three of four attempts, connecting from 44 yards in the second quarter to tie the score, 3-3, but missing twice earlier, from 40 and 46 yards on UCLA’s first two possessions.

His 46-yard try to end the first half hit the right upright. “It’s the kind of luck I’ve been having,” Merten said. “No luck at all.”

It might have been a factor, Donahue said, in his electing to go for a first down instead of a field goal at quiz time.

For all of Kaufman’s work, UCLA’s defense held Washington in check for most of two quarters and Shah was matching him yard for yard.

The Huskies took a 10-3 lead on Huard’s 10-yard touchdown pass to Dave Janoski with 48 seconds to play in the half, but UCLA came back on two runs by Shah and a 25-yard pass from Cook to Josh Eby to the Washington 29 with five seconds to play.

That’s when Merten hit the upright on his 47-yard field-goal try as time ran out.

Washington came back with a 71-yard drive to begin the second half, Huard completing a 32-yard pass to Eric Bjornson on the way and finishing things by handing the ball to Kaufman for the final four yards and a 17-3 lead.

A 22-yard field goal by Wales made the score 20-3, ending a drive on which Kaufman carried from his 20 to the UCLA one before being hauled down by Teddy Lawrence.

“I tried to stiff-arm the guy at the last minute, but he just grabbed on and pulled me down,” Kaufman said. “It’s kind of disappointing, running all that way and not getting into the end zone, but it happens like that sometimes, I guess.”

Kaufman’s previous longest run was 70 yards against Arizona in 1992.

He even got the requisite shoulder injury that seems necessary to be a Heisman Trophy candidate this season, joining Michigan’s Tyrone Wheatley and Alcorn State’s Steve McNair with such ailments.

Kaufman had banged it in a victory over Miami a week ago, then banged it again near the end of the half when he hit safety Abdul McCullough while blocking on a blitz. A halftime rubdown helped, and so did the 79-yard run, but “it still hurts,” Kaufman said.

UCLA hurts more. The Bruins (2-3, 0-2 in the Pacific 10) have lost three in a row, with a game at California next Saturday. Still, “believe it or not, I thought we made some progress as a team,” Donahue said. “I know that’s hard for people on the outside to understand or realize, but I thought we made some progress, despite the fact that we got whipped up here.”

Maybe. But Washington Coach Jim Lambright has a better lot in life. Without a bowl to shoot for because of Pac-10 and NCAA sanctions, Lambright declared the Huskies’ first four games their “bowl,” and set out to make a name for Washington and Kaufman against USC, Ohio State, Miami and UCLA.

At 3-1, with three victories in a row, and with Kaufman running for 670 yards in the four games, all on the network that so loves to show the Heisman winner in September, Lambright has exactly what he wanted.

“It’s been a hard road through four games, and to come out of these last three games the way we have, I couldn’t be happier,” he said.

Napoleon’s Numbers

A week-by-week look at the rushing performances by Washington’s Napoleon Kaufman.

Date Opponent Car Yds TD Avg Sept. 3 USC 26 152 1 5.8 Sept. 10 Ohio St. 32 211 1 6.6 Sept. 24 Miami 28 80 0 2.9 Oct. 1 UCLA 34 227 1 6.7 Totals 4 games 120 670 3 5.6