Freshmen Get Into the Flow

As Saturday’s game against top-ranked USC draws closer, the Bruin freshmen are dealing with emotions that range from nervousness to hate.

“It’s starting to get to me,” said Rodney Van, a defensive back from Long Beach Poly High. “I’m a little jittery because I don’t know what to expect. The campus atmosphere is totally different here.”

Van, who has played cornerback and on special teams, said he felt better after taking part in a campus rally this week in which he was allowed to use a sledgehammer to bash in a car that had been painted with USC markings.

“That was fun,” he added. “Hopefully, that will translate to the field on Saturday.”

Delivering crushing blows is the best kind of fun, Van said, but it would really be fun to flatten Hershel Dennis. The Trojan running back, along with safety Darnell Bing and defensive lineman Manuel Wright, was a high school teammate.

“When I see them, it’s friendship, but on Saturday it’s all business,” Van said.

Bruin defensive end Brigham Harwell considers his older Trojan counterpart and former Hacienda Heights Los Altos High teammate Shaun Cody a player he most looks up to. “But when the game starts, we’re enemies,” Harwell assured.

Chris Markey came to UCLA via Jesuit High in New Orleans. He learned quickly how serious the UCLA-USC rivalry is.

“The first day I was out here, I had on some red shorts and my teammates were saying, ‘You can’t have that here,’ so I realized then how important this game is to the team,” Markey said. “So even though I’m just a freshman, I’m taking it seriously and I’m going to go out and give it my all.”

Then there’s Trey Brown, son of former Bruin great Theotis Brown. Trey is a defensive back from Blue Valley Northwest High in Kansas who has played himself into the starting lineup. Theotis was a running back who instilled in his son early that he was a Bruin -- not anything else -- no matter where he was growing up.

Now that Trey really is a Bruin, he says he can hardly wait to take the field against a team he said he’s been “disgusted with” for as long as he can remember.

Asked whether this meant he hated the Trojans, Brown stood stone-faced on the practice field and responded, “Yep. I do.”

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Running back Maurice Drew, whose status had been in question because of a high ankle sprain suffered Nov. 6 against Washington State, practiced on a limited basis Thursday and “will play” but will not start Saturday against USC, Coach Karl Dorrell said.

Markey will start in Drew’s place for the second game in a row. In the Bruins’ 34-26 victory over Oregon on Nov. 13, Markey carried 23 times for 131 yards and caught five passes for 84 yards.

“As a backfield group we think we can run against anybody,” Markey said in reference to the Trojans, whose defense yields an average of less than 81 yards rushing.

“We don’t think anybody can stop us, so we’re going to go in with that mentality and execute the best we know how.”