After not beating rival Utah for four years and not even scoring a goal against the Utes since 2005, the BYU women's soccer team made up for years of frustration in a big way Saturday night at wet Ute Field.

The Cougars sent a barrage of shots at the Utes from the start and scored five first-half goals that stood up for a convincing 5-0 victory.

It was the Mountain West Conference opener for both teams as the Cougars improved to 8-5 on the season, while Utah fell to 4-7-2.

"I was very pleased with our performance — things kind of fell our way tonight," said BYU coach Jennifer Rockwood. "I'm really excited for our seniors because they haven't had a lot of success against Utah. It was nice to get that monkey off their backs."

Before the game was 13 minutes old, the Cougars had scored as many goals on the Utes as they had in the past five years combined.

Katie Larkin fired in a left-footed shot from the top of the box with just 5:28 gone in the game and added a penalty kick just three minutes later.

Another four minutes later, freshman Lauren Anderson fired in a bender from 25 yards out that snaked around Utah goalkeeper Emalee Rogers.

The Cougars added two more goals in a 92-second span later in the half as Becca Riddle scored on a rebound shot and Katie Hodgkiss scored from short range off an assist from Anderson.

In all, the Cougars fired 17 shots in the first half alone and finished with 24 for the game.

"We came prepared and were excited to start conference and play Utah," said Larkin. "I haven't beaten them since I've been here, so that was the ultimate goal tonight."

Utah had a couple of early chances to keep the keep the game close. Lauren Hair had a shot from the right side skip off the top of the crossbar after McKinzie Olson got a hand on it. A couple of minutes later, Hair had a penalty shot try after getting fouled in the box, but her shot was stopped by Olson.

But after the Cougars put the three-spot on them so early, the Utes didn't respond, which disappointed Ute coach Rich Manning the most.

"We've got respond better and hang in there," Manning said. " I thought once the second goal came and even the third one, we weren't ready to do that. I say congratulations to BYU. Whatever shooting drills they were doing this week I want to borrow."

In the second half Manning pulled Rogers in favor of Hannah Turpen, a freshman from California, who had been redshirting this season.

"Those goals were not Emalee's fault at all," Manning. "I just felt like she's taken five already let's not get her buried and get Hannah some experience."

"Sometimes in soccer your shots go in and sometimes they don't so we were fortunate the shots we took, went in," said Rockwood. "We just got off to a really good start."

Utah's next match will be Thursday night against San Diego State, while BYU plays host to UNLV the same night.

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