A Sight for Sore, Sad Eyes : UCLA: Injury to Maddox is a fitting conclusion to a dismal day against Stanford.

PALO ALTO —  Carlton Gray was feeling blue.

There was a throbbing pain in the cornerback’s ankle, the result of being trampled by Stanford’s Tommy Vardell late in a 27-10 loss, but nothing prepared Gray for what he saw as he limped into the UCLA locker room in the chill of Saturday night.

Stretched out on a table in front of him was quarterback Tommy Maddox. A team of doctors worked on Maddox and placed a rigid white collar around his neck to keep it from moving.

The door to the locker room was closed for nearly 30 minutes after the game and when it opened, UCLA team doctor Gerald Finerman said Maddox had suffered a concussion. Coach Terry Donahue said Maddox was injured when hit by 220-pound linebacker Ron George in the fourth quarter.

At 7:30 p.m., Maddox was gently lifted onto a gurney. His legs and head were taped down and he was connected to tubes feeding oxygen and intravenous fluid. He then was lifted into an ambulance and taken to the Stanford Medical Center.

Gray sat in a metal folding chair a few feet from where he had seen Maddox laid out in the locker room. Gray shook his head.

“It was frightening,” he said. “I was hobbling in on my crutches because of my ankle, but that puts my injury in perspective. I just said a prayer for Tommy.

“I hope everything is OK with Tommy,” he said. “If Tommy goes down, well, we’ll have to regroup. There are plenty of people who can replace me, but I don’t know if that’s true with Tommy.”

Sean LaChapelle said it was an eerie sight to watch the team’s offensive leader being worked on by a group of doctors on a table in the middle of the locker room while the rest of the UCLA team dressed silently all around.

“I am definitely concerned about him,” LaChapelle said. “He’ll bounce back . . . I hope.”

It was the end to an altogether dismal day for UCLA, who lost hopes of playing in the Fiesta Bowl or Citrus Bowl. But those were longshots anyway, which is what the Bruins might have become in the major bowl picture after a lackluster performance.

It was as Donahue described it: “We just got our butts kicked real good.”

The highlights? Well, it was a brief list, limited to Donahue’s praise for holding down Stanford’s return yardage.

Donahue went on to call the performance UCLA’s worst of the year. If there was a turning point, it might have been a 66-yard third-quarter touchdown pass play from quarterback Steve Stenstrom to flanker Jon Pinckney.

UCLA had narrowed Stanford’s lead to 14-10 when Pinckney victimized Gray. Pinckney was running behind Gray, leaped and reached over him to grab the ball at the 25-yard line.

“He couldn’t do nothing,” Pinckney said. “Wasn’t nothing he did wrong.”

Maybe. After the catch, Pinckney stood face to face with Gray until free safety Othello Henderson came over to help and instead knocked Gray down. Pickney ran untouched into the end zone.

That’s the way it goes, Gray said. “I can’t cover the man any better. Othello and I just kind of got our feet tangled. It happens to the best of them.”

LaChapelle is among the best of them, too, as a receiver, but there he was in the fourth quarter watching backup quarterback Jim Bonds’ pass bounce off his chest and fall to the ground.

“I should have made the catch, but didn’t,” LaChapelle said. “That figured, I guess. My concentration was shot by then.”

By then, Maddox was out of the game. By then, the Bruins were out of the game. Not long afterward, the Bruins were in their bus and Maddox was in his ambulance.

For UCLA, that was enough to ruin everyone’s concentration.