A DIRTY, UGLY, FITTING FINISH.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

SAN JOSE - For the $54 they paid for cold aluminum bench seats at aptly named Spartan Stadium to watch the Silicon Valley Football Classic on Tuesday night, 2,800 traveling UCLA fans deserved to see this year's Bruins at their best.

To put it in terms the hosts would understand, they deserved to see thisyearsbruins(at)theirbest.com.

And, anyway, weren't the Bruins supposed to be better at the end of Karl Dorrell's first season than they were at the start? And didn't Dorrell have a month to get Drew Olson and his teammates ready to play Fresno State in this poor man's bowl game? And shouldn't Olson have been full of confidence now that Matt Moore and their quarterback controversy were out of the way?

Wasn't this supposed to be the night the Bruins outclassed the Bulldogs from kickoff to closing time and gave the fans something positive to remember from 2003?

Instead, these Bruins' final act was dirty, ugly and fitting.

It was exactly the kind of disappointing effort that will keep the questions hanging over Dorrell throughout his first offseason. As the fourth quarter began, it was not-very-good Fresno State 17 and not-very-good UCLA 9, in front of 20,126 desperate souls on a night of temperatures in the 40s.

What was it that Dorrell had said earlier about the premium that a bowl game puts on coaching and practice?

``The difference is you have more time. In the regular season, you only have three practices the week of a game. Here you practice 10, 12 times for one (bowl) game,'' Dorrell said. ``It give you a chance to clear up a lot of different issues and also develop some guys you think are part of your future.''

Dorrell is, after all, supposed to know something about bowl-game success, having been a wide receiver when Terry Donahue was coaching the 1980s Bruins to seven bowl factories in seven seasons.

``Preparation is a big factor,'' Dorrell had said Monday. ``Your quarterback understanding his responsibility in orchestrating the offense, (in the case of this year's team) the defense playing as well as it has all year long.''

UCLA wasn't playing Oklahoma this time. It wasn't playing USC again. It was playing Fresno State. It should have been in charge from the start.

But the Bruins haven't scored more than one touchdown in the first half of a game all season and nothing changed Tuesday.

Fresno was up 17-0 before a running-into-the-punter penalty saved the Bruins from a fifth consecutive three-and-out series, and Craig Bragg made a diving catch of an Olson pass in the end zone with 20 seconds to go in the half.

The Bruins hadn't been getting the ball to Bragg, their best offensive weapon.

They hadn't been getting the ball to anybody, which is why Olson ended the half 5 of 20 for 61 yards, of which 27 came on the touchdown pass.

Meanwhile, the team with the weapons turned out to be Fresno. Eight Bulldogs carried or caught the ball in the 14-play drive that made it 7-0.

And then Bryson Sumlin, the tailback who scored that first touchdown on a 1-yard dive, took a short pass from Paul Pinegar and outran the Bruins for 44 yards to make it 14-0.

There were the usual strange play calls by the Bruins' staff, notably on fourth-and-1 at the Fresno 43 when it was still 7-0 late in the first quarter.

On a grass field left embarrassingly muddy by recent rain - couldn't one of the Silicon Valley's technological wizards remember the tarp? - a straight-ahead charge seemed like the right idea. But the order was for a delayed handoff to Maurice Drew and a rush around right end.

Drew was tackled two yards behind the line.

The game might have turned on that decision. Sumlin's touchdown sprint came two plays later.

Where they should have had a confidence-building victory, the Bruins were in danger of suffering their fifth consecutive defeat, matching their longest losing streak of the past 60 years.

``A lot of different issues''?

Dorrell couldn't clear them up in a month.

The question is whether he can clear them up in eight.