The following notes and quotes are from BYU's 19-13 loss to No. 23 Utah.
ATTENDANCE: 63,470
AMERICAN FLAG BEARER: BYU ROTC
TEAM FLAGS: Jonny Linehan, Trajan Pili
ALUMNI FLAG BEARERS: Kelly Smith (1980, 82-85), Robert Parker (1984-86), Tom Holmoe (1977-81), Robbie Bosco (1981-85)
TEAM NOTES
Series Record. BYU falls to a record of 31-57-4 against Utah.
Close Game. The BYU-Utah game has been decided by seven points or less in 19 of the last 24 meetings.
Sellout. Tonight’s BYU was a sellout with 63,470 fans in attendance. The last sellout game at LaVell Edwards Stadium was against Boise State in 2015.
PLAYER NOTES
Fred Warner
The senior captain led the team with eight total tackles, including six solo stops and one tackle for loss. He also recorded both a forced fumble and fumble recovery.
Ula Tolutau
The freshman running back rushed for 25 yards on five carries. Tolutau scored his first career touchdown on a one-yard run to give the Cougars their first points on the board.
Matt Bushman
Bushman had a career-high five receptions for 50 yards. His longest reception of the night was 20 yards.
Dayan Ghanwoloku
The defensive back had a season-high six solo stops.
Trey Dye
Dye caught a seven-yard pass from Tanner Mangum for his first career touchdown.
Tanner Mangum
With 170 yards passing, Mangum passed 4,000 career passing yards (4,084). He passed Riley Nelson (4,032) for 17th in career passing yards at BYU.
CAREER HIGHS
Long kick return: Jonah Trinnaman (45)
Rushing yards: Ula Tolutau (25)
Receptions: Matt Bushman (5), Beau Tanner (2)
Receiving yards: Beau Tanner (24), Aleva Hifo (23)
CAREER FIRSTS (The following players recorded their first in a respective category)
Pass breakup: Khyiris Tonga
Reception: Kavika Fonua
Rush: Beau Tanner
Touchdown: Ula Tolutau, Trey Dye
Forced fumble: Corbin Kaufusi
Head coach Kalani Sitake
I was disappointed with the result of the game. There are a lot of things we need to work on. I thought Utah played a great game, especially defensively.
We did not play well tonight. I’m really frustrated. We just really wanted this game, and now we have to wait another year to play them. We look forward to that, but, we can’t hang our heads. We have to move on and learn as much as we can from this game. We have a top-10 team coming into town next week.
On offense
We saw some successful things out there. It was nice to see our offensive clicking at the end. We dug a hole early on in the game with turnovers and interceptions, and we put our defense in some bad situations. I am not happy about it, and I am going to fix it. We need to fix the problems we are having on offense. It is frustrating that we couldn’t put together a drive to win the game.
On defense
I was proud of our defense and the way they played. Our defense is pretty good when we have a full field to defend. It is hard for teams to drive on us. I’m sure Coach Whittingham wasn’t happy with three field goals to start the game, and I am happy with our guys doing that, but we gave up a lot of plays throughout the game. They had a couple big passes down field.
On the offensive pass interference call
We need to execute better. We practice the routes plenty of times in practice. Nobody feels worse than Aleva (Hifo) right now, but we need to fix our mistakes. He is talented and has a lot of speed; but he can’t make costly mistakes, and he understands that. His mistake wasn’t the only issue, though. There were other breakdowns that made it difficult for Tanner to throw. We need to look at film and see what the issues are. I was proud of the final drive at the end that gave us a chance to win.
Ula’s recovery from injury is the main reason he hasn’t been out there that much. We feel like we are more comfortable with him being on the field now. I think we have found a good running back in Ula, and is that what we thought when we recruited him. We are looking forward to him being ready to go next week, and for him to be the guy.
We gave up a few sacks and we messed up on some protection issues. Utah is a team that can do so many different things defensively.
On defending Tyler Huntley
He is a dual threat. He is slippery and did a good job of running the ball. Even when we got close to him he was able to run out of the way and throw the ball. He can extend plays with his legs. He was their best running back tonight. I thought that defensively we did a pretty good job containing him, but didn’t do a good enough job getting sacks.
Tight end Matt Bushman
We fought. We played the best we could. Unfortunately, on offense we couldn’t execute some of the takeaways our defense helped us out with. It stinks to lose a rivalry game and it stinks to lose two games in a row, but we just have to keep moving forward and stay together. We are a team and have a long season ahead of us. We have to stay confident and get ready for Wisconsin next week.
We made some changes. I think our offense looked a lot better than we did against LSU. We just have to catch the ball and when the defense helps us out we’ve got to keep executing. And not rely on third down conversions every drive. We need to make some key plays. We have to keep moving forward and that’s the plan.
It’s not necessarily a relief because we know we know we can do it. It just hasn’t happened yet. It felt good to finally get things going and have that momentum.
Until the very end, we knew we had the plan to win this game. Unfortunately, that last drive didn’t happen. When we had that 1:20 left we were going to go down and score and try to win that game but unfortunately that didn’t happen.
It was definitely a big momentum shift. We charged down the field, scoring a touchdown, moved back 15 yards. We didn’t make that PAT or else we would have had the lead and would have had a bit more confidence. It would have felt great Things like that we just have to execute and make those plays. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
Running back Ula Tolutau
It felt good to get in the game today and get some touches. It felt good to run today.
I feel like our team is good. We just haven’t shown our full potential. We’ve got to get that running game going, the play-action.
It’s time to come together, especially with the O-line. They are making holes we just need to attack it and get some yards.
Linebacker Butch Pau’u
They are only putting up three points. They had multiple field goals. For us that is great. We did a really good job. You saw that everyone was having fun today. I’m proud of the defense. We don’t need to hang our head. A lot of the guys are down about this game. It’s a game and we’ve got to move on to the next one.
He’s a very smooth quarterback and is very tough to bring down. He did a really good job of managing the game. He saw the weakness of our defense I guess you could say. He did a good job managing their offense. We just need to do a better job at not letting them score that many points. We feel like we can hold any opponent to zero points. We need to continue to do well and move on from this game.
It makes us feel a little better but not enough. Our goal is to make sure that our defense does well enough. Our goal is that they don’t pass the 50. It was very loud today and we couldn’t get our calls to our defensive line. That is probably why they made a few plays.
I was expecting a quarterback sneak because they had done that the first couple times. I was expecting them to come back to it. We made sure to tell each other that everyone does their part. The whole week the coaches put an emphasis on everyone doing our 1/11th, doing their own assignment.
Linebacker Matt Hadley
I really was just trying to do my part. My 1/11th. I thought let’s make a play and I was able to. And everybody came behind me and started getting tackles.
You don’t want to be frustrated with the offense because they would see that. We try to keep our heads up, help them keep their heads up and encourage them. Of course we want them to put up more points. We can do a better job and hold them to even less points so that our offense doesn’t have to march all 90 yards down the field with a 1:15 left. We would like to see more points but we’ve got to do a better job as well.
It’s hard not to look at that and think that was a lot of my time here. It’s this season, you can’t really think about the past. The past isn’t going to help us get more wins in the future. For this season, it’s just frustrating because it’s our rival and we lost a close game. We can’t focus on that and what Utah will say about the streak.
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham
Still, have a lot to work on, we were penalized way too much, relying too much on Tyler Huntley and the run game. We need to get some help for him in the run game or he won’t be able to hold up for season. We have our issues. That team (BYU) played hard tonight. They’re well coached, I love their head coach and love what he is doing. They played hard.
Statistically, the game was closer than the statistics. We didn’t do a good job scoring touchdowns in the red zone. We didn’t do a good job on third down. We just don’t seem to be quite in sync offensively yet. I think it’s still a work in progress. Defensively, I thought we played very well. We gave up a couple things, but overall I thought we played very well. We held them to 230 or 40 yards and we got about 450 yards, so statistically, we beat them up, but the statistics don’t matter. The score is what matters.
I’m proud of Matt Gay, our kicker. I should have gone to him on the 4 and 1 in a three-score game and listened to myself and not get caught up in things. He may have not made it, who knows, but that was probably the wrong decision to make at that time to go for it on 4th and 1.
I thought our receivers played well. Caught some big balls down the field. Wilson caught that deep post. Carrington, I don’t know what he came away with, seven or eight catches, he was good again. But things we have to do better is get more rushing production and not Tyler Huntley runs because we don’t have enough. We’ve got to continue to clean up the penalties. Red zone issue we had it again today from last year. Defensively we got three take aways and had some sacks. The impact plays went up, but anytime we come down here it’s going to be tough. We didn’t expect to come in here and just have an easy time. We knew it was going to be a dog fight, every single one of these is. It’s just how it goes, down to the last series or the last play and tonight was no different. I said that all week long. I didn’t care what had happened previously, that’s just how this series has been. Very hard fought.
I don’t think the rivalry plays into the penalties. They weren’t ignorant penalties, malicious late hits or stupid things, swinging at somebody, but still too many penalties. 97 yards, basically 100 yards in penalties. That’s too much and it can’t continue. 140 something last week and 97 this week. What I can tell you is how proud I am of our players. I can’t tell you how proud I am of our players and our coaches. Even though we are not hitting on all cylinders right now, we’re working hard and everyone is bought in. We had a great buy in with this staff and in this program and the care about each other, which is good.
I think Tyler is making good decisions, and I’m not talking about the QB run game when he is involved, but the pure run game. When he is not in a running situation, he’s just handing off the ball to our backs, we got to be more efficient with that. I think there was enough tonight to get going with it, we just didn’t get it going. We put the ball on the ground, I think we had two turnovers, and it can’t happen. Not if you want to be a really good team.
We address the penalties in practice every week and punishment goes along with it. We just keep coaching it. The technique on the outside, we seem to be getting the majority of the penalties blocking on the perimeter, holding in particular, and we had three or four of those tonight, one from our running back and a couple from the wide receivers. And Tyler’s got to understand that when we got the run pass option call, you can’t really scramble around throw the ball because our linemen are going to be down field.
Defensive back Boobie Hobbs
We just prepared on being ready for whatever they had basically. They’re a very physical team we knew they were going to pound it. The throwing game; I don’t know if it worked out too much but we just prepared on both sides running it and passing.
If someone makes a mistake, we’re going to go cheer them up. You know, short-term memory, just forget about it. We’re all a family. You get in a game and we’re just not going to turn our back on someone that made a mistake. That’s not how we roll.
We pride ourselves on turnovers, man. Four in the score is usually our motto. Getting turnovers was the main point. We have to get turnovers. We have to. Last year we had a great secondary we got a ton of turnovers. People kind of think we’re weak back there in the secondary so turnovers was a big part in this game.
Without the defensive line there’s no turnovers, there’s no picks. You know, those guys play a hell of a game by getting pressure and when they get pressure, we get picks, so we like it.
Wide receiver Darren Carrington II
We need to come out faster and buckle down a little bit, play more disciplined. We shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes, but we work and get past it.
It’s just all about belief, believing in those young guys. We have a lot of young guys playing and you can’t tell. It’s like they’ve been here. What we’re going to do moving forward is continue to be us, continue to get in the film room, continue to study, continue to get bigger, faster and stronger and just come out and compete when it’s our time to compete.
Quarterback Tyler Huntley
You need to be prepared for everything. But we pulled it out and we’ve just got to prepare for next week now.
I feel like because our offense is fast, we are still trying to get used to our offense. It’s only going to get better. It’s only the second week and our first big game. We are just taking it game by game.
I think they always tell me that. I try my best to get out of bounds but everything inside of me tells me to get more yards. But I need to start working on getting out of bounds.
We felt like we should have put up more points but we’ve got to live with it and come out better next week.
I excepted a good game. It’s a rivalry game and I was expecting them to come out hard. We came out hard and left a lot of points on the field. We need to come out next week and play harder.
Kicker Matt Gay
There is always pressure out kicking a field goal with so many fans out here. I grew up here so it’s a game that’s close to home. I live 10 minutes down the street. I grew up with all my friends and everyone cheering for BYU, so I definitely wanted to come out and prove a point and keep my nerves down and I got those chances.
There’s some frustration on the sideline a little bit, just because I’m on the sideline more so than these guys are. I’m there for most of the game. I feel the energy going on the sidelines, so when you get those penalties it’s kind of frustrating because it’s kind of like DC said, we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot. I mean a lot of their offense or a lot of things we were doing are stopped by our own selves our own penalties that we need to clean up. We definitely left a lot of points on the board that we could have cleaned up as penalties, turnovers.
Obviously, I like to help my team in any way that I can so if they call my name, call my number, then I’m going to go out and do what I’m prepared to do. But that’s coach’s decision, he needs to make that call and I respect and trust whatever coaches decide. I got out there and was on the field, act like I was going to kick kind of throw them off a little bit, see what they were going to bring us. But in the end result they decided to go for it and I support that and I trust our guys.