"I told the team if you play hard and don't turn the ball over, you have a chance," Long said. "The turnovers hurt us and they took advantage. They're a good football team. You cannot turn the ball over against a good team like that."

BYU led 20-0 at halftime and extended that lead early in the second half when Cougar freshman Michael Alisa jarred the ball loose from SDSU's McKell Wesley on the kickoff. Freshman Spencer Hadley recovered.

Taking over at the Aztecs' 29-yard line, BYU's offense scored five plays later on a three-yard run by senior Wayne Latu to lift the Cougars to a 27-0 advantage.

In addition to Nixon, another senior, Michael Reed, turned in an impressive performance in his final home game. The wide receiver from Baytown, Texas, finished with five catches for 95 yards, including a career-long 56-yarder. That long pass play set up a six-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Max Hall to Andrew George.

"It's unbelievable," Hall said of the seniors' final home game. "I wanted to do everything I could for those guys and send them out right. I think they played hard. They can be proud of the way they played today and going out with our third straight undefeated season at home."

Of course, Hall and wide receiver Austin Collie were unbelievable, too.

Hall completed 25-of-30 passes for 317 yards and three touchdowns, while Collie caught nine passes for 127 yards. In the fourth quarter, Hall hooked up with Collie on touchdown strikes of 61 yards and nine yards.

"Hall and Collie are two great players. I'll be glad when I don't have to see those guys anymore," Long said. "They have a great chemistry between them. You can tell they've worked together all off-season They probably go play catch in the middle of winter.

"They're two great players, very smart and hard to beat. Collie is a great route runner and has great hands on top of that."

The Cougars finished with 421 yards of total offense, but only 104 on the ground on 37 carries — that coming against a defense that entered the contest ranked dead last in the nation in rushing defense. The Aztecs had yielded an average of 292.8 rushing yards per game coming into Saturday's contest.

"I was surprised," Mendenhall said. "I thought we would be able to run the ball more effectively than we did."

Vakapuna rushed eight times for 18 yards, while Harvey Unga had 37 yards on 11 carries before leaving the game with a neck stinger.

"San Diego (State) did a really good job of bringing guys down in the box, blitzing us and playing cover-three to stop the run," Hall said. "We had to take advantage of them on the edges and throw the ball. But I'm not disappointed. I thought we played awesome today."

Hall acknowledged that the offense needs to be more polished.

"We're just getting better at executing our stuff," he said. "As long as we stay out of third-and-long, I think we're pretty good. There are a few kinks we have to work out."

BYU's defense limited SDSU to 280 total yards. The Aztecs hit a pair of field goals but did not reach the end zone until there were only 49 seconds remaining in the game when Lindley threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to Darren Mougey.

The Cougars travel to Air Force on Saturday.

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E-mail: jeffc@desnews.com