LAS VEGAS — As BYU attempted to rally in the waning moments Saturday night in the Las Vegas Bowl against Arizona, Mitch Payne's 38-yard field goal smacked the left upright.

And with that, a Cougar season that began with so much promise ended with a resounding thud.

A bevy of BYU penalties, turnovers, missed field goals and defensive lapses proved costly as Arizona defeated the Cougars, 31-21, at Sam Boyd Stadium.

"It's very disappointing. We had high hopes coming into this game," said wide receiver Austin Collie, who caught 11 passes for 119 yards.

"We thought we had the potential to come out here and get a 'W'. We just haven't been executing. We wanted it. We didn't play to our potential."

The Wildcats (8-5) executed much better, explained coach BroncoMendenhall.

"They made the critical plays when they needed to make critical plays," he said. "We didn't play championship football tonight."

Arizona quarterback Willie Tuitama turned in an impressive performance in his final game in a Wildcat uniform, completing 24-of-35 passes for 325 yards and two touchdowns en route to earning Las Vegas Bowl MVP honors.

"It basically came down to execution," said senior linebacker David Nixon. "We slipped up. It's something that's plagued us in our three

losses."

BYU ended the season with a 10-3 mark and, if there was a common

theme in those three losses, it was falling behind early, then perhaps pressing too much and committing errors while trying to stage

a comeback.

Still, the Cougars rolled up 444 yards of total offense, compared to 416 yards for the Wildcats.

"Arizona really didn't stop our offense today," said wide receiver Michael Reed. "We stopped ourselves."

While the Wildcats had played as recently as two weeks ago, BYU had a month-long layoff between its regular-season finale and Saturday's game. But coaches and players said that wasn't the reason for their lack of precision against Arizona.

"We had some execution and ball-security issues in our last game (against Utah)," Mendenhall pointed out.

In the end, the Cougars failed to fulfill their potential, both against Arizona and throughout the 2008 campaign.

"It was a good season, not a great season," Collie said. "We had the potential to have a great season. It was kind of a letdown. We didn't

do what we thought we could have done."

"It wasn't the way we wanted to end this season, but we've got to pick our heads up," Reed said. "We had a good year. A lot of teams