Utah pulled off a 35-28 victory in a postseason version of the Holy War, sending Cougars coach Bronco Mendenhall out with a loss as he leaves BYU for the Virginia head coaching job.
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“I learned my lesson in the Colorado game”, Utah receiver Kenneth Scott said of his personal foul for taunting on November 28.
All told, Utah held a 35-0 lead with 4:38 remaining in the first quarter while needing only 65 yards of offense. Senior quarterback Travis Wilson ended his final game as a Ute with 71 passing yards. Byu Cougars scored 30.3 points compared to allowed21.
Those turnovers skewed a first half in which Utah couldn’t do much on offense. We expect a lower scoring contest in Vegas in this rivalry game and with Utah missing DeVontae Booker. The Utes had an average start position of the BYU 23 on its three offensive touchdowns. “This will be the first time this rivalry game has taken place in a bowl setting so it has some historic significance as well as being a great matchup between two teams that have had outstanding seasons”. The Cougars looked little like the team that’d only committed 15 turnovers all season, coughing up the ball five times in the first 15 minutes.
Scored his seventh rushing TD of the season for the opening score of the second half. Even after BYU cut the lead to seven, Utah’s win probability did not drop below 87 percent. He had the most touchdowns for a BYU freshman since Jamaal Williams’ 12 in 2012.
ORLANDO, Fla. – San Jose State rode the fourth-quarter magic of Kenny Potter to defeat Georgia State in the inaugural Auto Nation Cure Bowl.
Had his first career game with multiple sacks. LB Scooby Wright III had two sacks and 11 solo tackles. There are other factors besides turnovers that decided games, but this is one example of why yards can be misleading when determining the victor.
Tanner Mangum fumbled the ball on the third play of the game in the red zone, after Algie Brown was tackled for a loss and the freshman quarterback missed tight end Remington Peck on his first pass attempt. Dominique Hatfield returns it 46 yards for the touchdown. The Cougars eventually made it in, making the score 35-28.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud of my team”, Mendenhall said. “So we’ll leave it at that, I guess”. Wilson hasn’t played great as of late, but he has the potential to be lethal when he’s on.
“We’ve had a couple of times this year of doing things that were unnecessary with words and got flags because of it”, Mathews said. It could’ve easily gone to 70 if they hadn’t of responded the way they did. That’s just our defense flying around.
Tweet of the game: There were a lot of good tweets during this game, particularly early when Utah jumped out to that 35-0 lead, but my favorite was actually a quote of something Brent Musberger said while calling the game.
Utah, however, brought more heat to Sin City. Nobody was down on him, we were frustrated, but our guys believed in Tanner. After Utah went down and scored the football right away, the defense got after Mangum. You can definitely expect him to be airing it out this game. We’ll give you a short summary otherwise. Even our wins, in numerous games this season, we trailed. “There was no question this team was going to keep fighting”. I was just grateful to help to be honest, I didn’t care if it was me.
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This game is going to come down to who makes the least amount of mistakes, and which QB can step up to the challenge. It didn’t, though, because Hackett then came off the field and was replaced by Utah’s impotent offense.
