Oklahoma State Cowboys prepare for 'tremendously athletic' UCLA

STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) _ One thing in particular struck Oklahoma State coach Les Miles as he watched UCLA's football team rally to beat Colorado State. <br><br>The Bruins have no shortage of gifted

Tuesday, September 10th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) _ One thing in particular struck Oklahoma State coach Les Miles as he watched UCLA's football team rally to beat Colorado State.

The Bruins have no shortage of gifted athletes.

``They're just so talented,'' Miles said. ``They have corners, linebackers, linemen and a great wide receiver and a couple quarterbacks, a tailback that can really run.''

The Cowboys (1-1) get to see it all firsthand when the No. 23 Bruins (1-0) visit Stillwater on Saturday night.

UCLA beat Colorado State 30-19 by outscoring the Rams 23-6 in the fourth quarter. The Bruins scored a touchdown to take a 14-13 lead, then scored again moments later when cornerback Ricky Manning forced a fumble to set up a 16-yard TD run by Manuel White.

White added another touchdown with 1:01 remaining to seal the victory.

At his weekly news conference Monday, Miles said he thinks his team matches up better with UCLA than Colorado State did. But he also said Colorado State played with the kind of emotion his team must match.

``What we have to do is play inspired football and raise our game,'' he said. ``Then it'll be who plays the best that Saturday.''

The Cowboys didn't play their best against Northern Iowa on Saturday night, but outmanned the Division I-AA Panthers and won 45-10. Oklahoma State had 10 penalties, including a block in the back that negated a punt return for a touchdown, and Josh Fields threw an interception that stopped a drive deep in Northern Iowa territory.

The Cowboys won't survive with those kinds of mistakes against UCLA, Miles said.

``We have to improve and we have to make sure that we don't do those things. We can't have those things against this team,'' he said.

``If you tell them, 'This game, you can't do anything wrong,' you're telling them the wrong things. But what you say is true _ we want an errorless game. We don't want turnovers, we don't want penalties. We want to give this team our very best shot.''

One way to do that would be to throw the ball in the direction of Rashaun Woods, who has 19 catches for 301 yards through the first two games. He had a career-high 175 yards on nine receptions against Northern Iowa, and in the past six games has averaged 115.7 yards per game.

UCLA has a premiere cornerback in Manning, which could make for some entertaining battles between the two.

``It's going to be interesting to see how they play it, how they approach Rashaun Woods with that corner,'' Miles said. ``He's a pretty stout corner.''