Olson just happy to win

PASADENA, Calif. — UCLA quarterback Ben Olson vanquished his former team, but he had a lot of help from his power blue-clad friends.

Thanks in part to the Bruins' defense, which forced a pair of turnovers, No. 13 UCLA earned a tough 27-17 victory over BYU Saturday at the Rose Bowl.

Olson was simply happy about the outcome.

"We won. That's the most important thing," he said. "BYU's a good team. They came out and had a good scheme and we came up with plays when we needed them."

After throwing five touchdown passes the previous week against Stanford, Olson ran into some trouble against BYU's defense.

"Every game's going to be different," he said. "I felt like I could have played better, but we won."

While Olson's statistics were lackluster — he completed 13-of-28 passes for 126 yards and an interception — he did lead UCLA on a late fourth-quarter drive that chewed up nearly four minutes off the clock and resulted in a game-clinching touchdown with 1:12 remaining. Bruin coach Karl Dorrell liked the way his junior QB finished.

"He probably was in a similar game a year ago at Washington. He didn't get to make the final plays to engineer a drive. But he did that today," Dorrell said. "That was something you could tell he's grown from. He hit some third-down passes and converted some first downs in that last drive. We took about three-and-a-half minutes off the game at the end before we put up the final seven points with one minute left. I was encouraged with how he finished the game. That's what you build on."

Aside from that final drive, Olson — who redshirted at BYU for one year before serving a mission and transferring to UCLA — struggled mightily in the second half as the Cougars roared back from a 20-3 halftime deficit.

Midway through the third quarter, Olson fumbled a snap for a 6-yard loss. On the following play, he floated a pass that was intercepted by Kayle Buchanan. Two plays later, the Cougars narrowed the deficit to 20-17.

In the fourth quarter, after being sacked by defensive end Brett Denney for a 9-yard loss, BYU fans in attendance taunted him by chanting, "Ol-son! Ol-son!"

Olson was sacked one other time, at the end of the first quarter by linebacker Bryan Kehl, who was his roommate in 2002 when the pair were freshmen at BYU. Did they get a chance to talk to each other?

"During the game, not too much," Kehl said. "Just smiles."