BYU football: Cougar win seems just like old times

PROVO — You know BYU football is back when fans boo decisions to punt rather than go for it and an opposing coach plays the officiating fix card.

BYU ran its record to 6-0 Saturday with a 21-3 win over New Mexico. It was a hard-fought battle that Bronco Mendenhall predicted would be physical and tough.

It was all that.

This series, which now features two head coaches in Rocky Long and Bronco Mendenhall, once Lobo coaching brothers, was a smash-nose football extravaganza from beginning to end and Mendenhall spent plenty of time afterwards paying respect to Long and his players.

The Lobos elected to attack the Cougars with star back Rodney Ferguson, held out a week ago, tossing a major test at BYU's run defense while shortening the game to a zippy 2 hours and 36 minutes.

UMN surprised BYU's offensive coaches by electing to not stack the box and come at QB Max Hall. Instead, the Lobos dropped back into coverage and played far more zone in the secondary than expected.

Why?

Perhaps Hall is significantly protected and gets the ball off too quickly. The Lobos evidently wanted to protect their flank.

BYU surprised almost everyone by not running Harvey Unga until just under 11 minutes remained the first half after trying to sling the ball around the field when the Lobos weren't bringing extra defenders to the line. It was BYU's second run play of the quarter. The other? A reverse run to Austin Collie.

Instead, the Cougars opened the game passing like crazy. It got a little silly when BYU ran a series of failed shots (five incompletions) to Austin Collie and Michael Reed, part of a BYU final drive of the first half that ended in a missed 39-yard field goal. Most the success of that drive was Unga bowling over Lobos.

"I was surprised I didn't get a carry in the first quarter, but I don't second-guess the coaches," said Unga.

"We could have got him more carries early," said his coach, Lance Reynolds.

Once Unga started rolling, averaging 4 yards a carry (22 carries 95 yards), BYU got on the scoreboard after trailing 3-0. BYU failed to score in the first quarter for the first time this season.

That certainly frustrated some of the Cougar faithful, who lustily booed several BYU decisions to punt or try a field goal on fourth and short yardage situations throughout the game.

"It appeared I wasn't popular with the fans today," said Mendenhall, "But I'll live with that."