Defense figures to see plenty of Florida State’s two quarterbacks

SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout the regular season, Florida State has played two quarterbacks in Drew Weatherford and Xavier Lee. Although Weatherford will start tonight, UCLA also expects to see plenty of Lee.

“Both quarterbacks are very talented in their own right, but they have their own distinctive styles,” UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell said.

Weatherford, a 6-foot-3, 220-pound sophomore, is the more traditional drop-back passer who has started 22 games in his career. He passed for 1,829 yards and 11 touchdowns with 10 interceptions during the regular season and has shown that he can have big passing days such as his four-touchdown effort against Duke this season and a 377-yard effort against Virginia in 2005.

Lee, a 6-4, 230-pound sophomore, has more mobility than Weatherford. After not playing in four of the first seven games of the season, Lee had his moments over the second half of the season. In the first start of his career, against Maryland, he completed 22 of 36 passes for 286 yards and two touchdowns.

“A lot of time, when you have two quarterbacks, you see a change in their offense a little bit,” UCLA defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker said. “But not with them. They do what they do with either quarterback, so it really doesn’t matter to us which one plays.”

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Rain is in the forecast for today’s game, which isn’t news to Dorrell.

“The last two or three years, when I’ve seen this bowl game on TV, the surface had been wet and they had rain,” Dorrell said. “We both have to play on it.... We’ll just have to adjust and let it go.”

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UCLA redshirted the bulk of its 2002 freshman class, but only five players remain with the program for their final game tonight: center Robert Chai, tight end J.J. Hair, long snapper Riley Jondle, linebacker Eric McNeal and kicker Justin Medlock.

“Looking around, it’s easy to see that there are only a couple of us left,” Chai said. “You just look back to when we first got here and people would tell you that some of you guys will not be here at the end. But with the guys who made it this far, it’s made us that much closer. We know what we’ve been through. It’s helped us have that much more respect for each other.”

Fifth-year senior receiver Junior Taylor played as a freshman in 2002 but used a redshirt season last year because of a knee injury.

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The University of San Francisco’s 1951 “Undefeated, Untied and Uninvited” football team will be honored at tonight’s game. The 1951 team, which featured Ollie Matson, Burl Toler, Gino Marchetti and Bob St. Clair, dominated play during the regular season but did not receive an invitation to a bowl game because the Dons refused to drop their two African American players (Matson and Toler) to receive a bid. Nineteen of the team’s players are expected for the presentation.

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Dorrell is the first UCLA coach to lead his team into a bowl game in his first four seasons but is 1-2. UCLA lost to Fresno State in the Silicon Valley Classic in 2003 and to Wyoming in the Las Vegas Bowl in 2004. Last year, the Bruins defeated Northwestern in the Sun Bowl.

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