Provo, UT (Best E Casino) - Winners of 11 straight home games, the newly- ranked BYU Cougars try to push the run to 12 in a row this weekend as the 23rd- ranked squad in the land entertains the Utah Utes in a Mountain West Conference showdown at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
Owners of a new MWC home win streak, the Cougars have in fact won 14 in a row in their own stadium against league foes, last losing to this same Utah squad in the league season finale back in 2005. More recently, BYU ran its current overall win streak to seven last Saturday with a 35-10 blowout against Wyoming in Laramie. Tied with Utah for the fourth-longest winning streak in the nation, the Cougars have not been defeated since bowing to Tulsa on the road in a 55-47 event in the middle of September.
As for the Utes, who unlike BYU are closing out the regular season this weekend, they took care of their own business last week with a 28-10 triumph over New Mexico at home at Rice-Eccles Stadium. At 5-2 in league play, Utah will certainly make a postseason appearance, while BYU is atop the standings this week with a perfect 6-0 mark, while a postponed meeting with San Diego State still looms next weekend.
As far as the all-time series is concerned, Utah holds a 52-32-4 edge over the Cougars, but it was BYU which captured the slim 33-31 victory in last year's meeting in Salt Lake City. The loss for the Utes snapped the team's four-game win streak versus the Cougars.
Running for 77 yards and a touchdown on 24 carries last weekend, Darrell Mack not only helped the Utes to a win over New Mexico, he also became the ninth player in program history to reach the 1,000 mark for a season. Despite being sacked three times and intercepted once, Brian Johnson also put together a quality effort with his 16-of-27 passing for 165 yards and a score as well. Bradon Godfrey and Derrek Richards both had six catches and scored a TD through the air. Mack has been a one-man wrecking machine for the Utes coming out of the backfield thus far, posting 1,072 yards and nine touchdowns on 217 attempts, while the rest of the group has combined for less than 800 yards and just six TDs. Bouncing back into the lineup following yet another injury this season, Johnson has made good on nearly two-thirds of his pass attempts, leading to 10 TDs, but also seven picks when he gets too greedy. Between he and Tommy Grady, the Utah signal-callers have done extremely well spreading the ball around, with as many as seven receivers having reeled in at least a dozen passes and nine different players accounting for 17 scoring grabs.
Save for a two-yard rushing score by Rodney Ferguson early in the third quarter, the Utah defense held New Mexico down as well as any other team this season. The Lobos gained just 81 yards on the ground and 279 yards of offense overall against a group of Utes who were out to prove a point. Steve Tate tallied a team-best 10 tackles, while Paul Kruger recorded six stops, of which one and a half were against the UNM quarterback, adding a forced fumble to his stat line as well. Tate continues to pace the group in total tackles this season with 94 through 11 games, with his 58 stops more than all but one of his teammate's overall takedowns. On his way to all-conference honors, Martail Burnett has registered a quarter of his 45 tackles behind the line of scrimmage, with seven of those being sacks. Because of his efforts and those of his teammates, the Utes are first in the MWC and tied for ninth in the nation this week with 3.18 sacks per outing. The sacks have been a result of a pass defense that has locked up on receivers and limited opponents to a mere 180.7 ypg, first in the conference and 11th in the nation.
Max Hall continued to show why he's one of the better quarterbacks in the nation that nobody has heard of outside of the Mountain West. He threw for 331 yards and connected with three different receivers for touchdowns as BYU ended up with a staggering 497 yards of total offense. Hall, who was named the MWC Offensive Player of the Week on Monday, is not the league's top sophomore passer after going over the 3,000 yards mark and getting past Wyoming's Casey Bramlet. Hall, who took over for the departed John Beck, has converted 61 percent of his pass attempts for 312.1 ypg this season, which means the BYU passing attack is ranked first in the MWC and eight in the nation entering play this week. There are three players who have at least 37 receptions, 573 yards and three touchdowns this season, which goes to show how well Hall is spreading the ball around. Not to be overlooked are running backs Harvey Unga and Manase Tonga who have produced nine and eight rushing TDs, respectively, with the former doing most of the hard work with his team-best 909 yards on 181 carries.
A week earlier Wyoming head coach Joe Glenn had ruffled more than a few feathers when he guaranteed a win over Utah before being blown out, so BYU knew it had to keep pace with the Utes in that department. While it wasn't as big of a massacre, the Cougars still limited the Pokes to a mere 10 points and holding the home team to a paltry nine rushing yards on 24 attempts. In the process, BYU remained one of two teams, the other being top-ranked LSU, still without allowing an opponent to produce a 100-yard rusher in any game this season. Matt Bauman led the squad with seven tackles and accounted for one of the unit's three sacks. Taking into account the mere nine yards allowed Wyoming on the ground last week, the run defense for the Cougars is now ranked first in the conference and 10th in the country with just 92.2 ypg surrendered. Because the team tends to get out to big leads, it only makes sense that opponents then resort to passing the ball as much as possible, resulting in the secondary giving up 216.4 ypg and yet the squad is still ranked first overall in the MWC in total defense with just 308.6 ypg.
