The following notes and quotes are from BYU's 41-20 win over San José State Saturday at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
ATTENDANCE: 46,451
AMERICAN FLAG BEARER: LB Morgan Unga
TEAM FLAGS: DB Gavin Fowler, DB Young Tanner, DL Corbin Kaufusi
ALUMNI FLAG BEARERS: Ty Mattingly (’84-86), Billy Bryant (’86, ’90-92), Lance Reynolds Jr. (’01-05), Jamaal Williams (’12-16)
TEAM NOTES
First-Quarter Touchdowns
The Cougars scored a pair of touchdowns in the first quarter for the first time since Southern Utah in 2016.
Second Career Touchdowns
Both Micah Simon and Matt Busman scored their second career touchdowns early in the first quarter. They caught touchdown passes of 23 and 11 yards, respectively. Simon added a second touchdown in the fourth quarter.
Offensive Season Highs
BYU scored a season-high 41 points and had 598 yards of total offense, including 332 passing yards and 266 rushing yards. It was the most yards of total offense since 741 against Wagner in 2015 and most against an FBS team since 601 against Nevada in 2014.
Century Mark
The Cougars had a 100-yard rusher for the second time this season with KJ Hall’s 112 yards. Ula Tolutau ran for 102 yards at Utah State.
Points Off Turnovers
BYU has scored at least seven points off of an opponent turnover in each of the past five games. The Cougars scored 20 points off turnovers against the Spartans and forced a season-high five turnovers.
Fifty-Plus Reception Yards
Three BYU receivers had at least 50 yards: Micah Simon (67), Aleva Hifo (54) and Jonah Trinnaman (50).
Multi-Touchdown game
BYU had a player with two touchdowns in the same game for the first time this season with Micah Simon grabbing two scores. Four different players scored at least one touchdown in the game.
PLAYER NOTES
Tanner Mangum
Mangum went 18 of 34 for 283 yards and three touchdowns. He has 416 career completions, making him the 13th BYU quarterback with 400 career completions. Mangum now has 703 career passing attempts after 34 against San José State and sits at 14th in program history with at least 700 attempts. It is the first time Mangum threw for at least three touchdowns in a game since four against Utah State in 2015.
KJ Hall
Hall ran 75 yards down the field for BYU’s third touchdown and a 21-6 lead. It was the Cougars’ longest run since an 87-yarder by Mike Hague in 2006 against UNLV. Hall ran for a career-best 112 yards on 10 carries and three receptions for 44 yards. He hit the century mark for the second time in his career (UMass 2016, 101 yards). Hall and his dad Kalin (five 100-yard games) are BYU’s only father-son 100-yard duo.
Micah Simon
Simon scored two touchdowns in the first multi-touchdown game of his career. It is also the first time a BYU player has had two touchdowns this season. He caught touchdown passes of 23 and 41 yards, respectively, in addition to 67 yards on three receptions.
Sione Takitaki
Takitaki had seven total tackles, including five solo stops and two tackles for loss. He also had one sack and pass breakup.
NOTABLE CAREER HIGHS
Long rush: KJ Hall (75)
Rushing yards: KJ Hall (112)
Tackles: Morgan Unga (8)
NOTABLE FIRSTS (The following players recorded their first in a respective category)
Fumble recovery: Austin Lee, Langi Tuifua, Brayden El-Bakri
Reception: JJ Nwigwe
QUOTES
BYU head coach Kalani Sitake
Our guys played hard. I thought they’ve played hard all season. I appreciate them taking over, using our coaching staff and how hard they work for this win. Now we’ve just got to keep it going and get the next one.
If we could do that every week that would be good. I think (Brayden) El-Bakri does a good job for us on the field and helped us early on. He’s a tough kid, he is one of our better guys on kick-off returns. He makes great tackles, great plays and he can run the ball a little bit too. We want to utilize the fullback a little more too.
We’ve just got to keep it going and be consistently aggressive. I still feel like there were a lot of points left on the field and off the scoreboard. But I think it was good for our reserve defensive guys, not good that they got scored on, but it’s hard to simulate those reps and get them that kind of experience.
The think that those last two drives that they scored on us were hard for our defense and hard for our coaches to take but it will be a good step for our guys in the long run, and it will be a good experience to see it on film. Offensively, we still have things that we need to keep working on but for the most part I think our guys did good up-front. I thought we took advance of our strength up front on both defensive and offensive line, obviously I think that we can handle the run better. We have to give a lot of credit to San Jose Staté who stuck with it and saw the seams and the holes in our defensive.
It was just nice to get a lead and not have to come from behind. We’ve got ourselves in the hole way too many times in a lot of games. Our goal is to get some confidence and establish that identify and keep working on it and trust it to stand throughout the game. There are a lot of things to fix, I’m just pleased that we got the win. It’s been something that we’ve been needing, so I’m excited for that but I just really want to get to work and try to get the next one.
We are trying to establish our identify through our progression and it doesn’t really matter what the score was. I want to see our guys perform and answer the call. We put a lot of trust in them to make plays and for the most part they did that. I’m pretty pleased with the coaches and I thought the plays did a good job.
I thought that we were more aggressive in the way that we practiced and the way we approached our work days as coaches. The focus was a lot better. I was trying to establish more confidence. I think we are able to get more confidence out on the field. But just having optimism isn’t good enough, just saying that things will get better isn’t good enough. You have to combine that with hard work and dedication. Once you get those combined and get it right, you have confidence and it shows on the field. Although it wasn’t perfect, there are a lot of things that we can still do but it’s a lot easier to make those corrections when you win.
Junior quarterback Tanner Mangum
Right off the bat, we took some shots and played with an aggressive mindset. We had some big plays and receivers made big catches. That is what makes my job easy. It was fun to get out there and play in front of the home crowd.
When you get off to a good start, you can play more loose and free. I give a lot of credit to our defense and making things easier for us.
Obviously we are happy with the win, but there is a lot more we could have done. I missed a couple of throws, and there were some drives we could have finished. Even if you are winning, you’re always going to want more. It’s good because we never want to be satisfied.
It is good when you can get the backups in to get some reps because it means we’ve done our job and had a good game.
We needed some first downs, and I did what I could with the opportunities. My ankle is feeling better and giving me more mobility.
KJ Hall’s instinct is amazing. With the long run, he showed some great patience. I love having him in there. He is a good athlete, and we are hoping to get more out of him.
Sophomore wide Receiver Micah Simon
We practiced that look all week, and we were ready for it. It was the exact look we thought we would get.
Every game we have the confidence to go out and play — it is about showing up. It all clicked this week. We need to get back to work and minimize those mistakes.
It was different getting a win — there are lots of happy faces right now.
Junior defensive back Zayne Anderson
I think as a defensive back, you’re more competitive up front. We had a lot of turnovers, and I think that comes from being aggressive.
Our coaches really do a good job of teaching us to keep our eye on the football and to punch through. I’m just doing what they tell me to do.
That’s awesome. Brayden (El-Bakri)’s like a defensive player. He always flies down, making defensive plays for us. For him to go in and make plays at the end of the game is awesome.
Junior defensive lineman Sione Takitaki
It feels good. We finally got a win. Just knowing that we can be a really good team. We had a couple of losses get away from us, but definitely getting this win feels really great. I’m happy for the coaches — to just get a win and go from there. We’ve got Fresno State next week.
I feel like we executed early instead of waiting until halftime to actually come out and play. I feel like we attacked them instead of waiting.
That was a great feeling. It was a designed blitz. The center actually slid over to the right, so we had Butch (Pau’u) go through the B gap and he just took that really tight through the gap. It opened up. We went through it in practice. It was great. And in game time it actually came through for us. It was all Butch. He acted like he was going through the A gap and actually went through the B gap. I came right through his tail on the A gap. It was all Butch.
I feel going up 14-0 for any team is a good feeling. Especially going in as defensive players knowing that there are already points on the board. We’re just going out there to execute. To have that confidence behind you – with the momentum on our side – is great for us.
San José State head coach Brent Brennan
Obviously, it was an ugly day for us. The turnovers were an absolute disaster, in my opinion. Anytime you turn the ball over, I think we had six, but we turned the ball over four times in the first half. We repeatedly put our defense in really hard situations that I thought to our defense’s credit, they came up with some big stops on fourth down at the end of the half. Multiple stops on turnovers deepened our territory that ended up in a field goal. So, I thought there were some good things that way. There were too many big plays on defense, and some of that is just getting off blocks and tackling. We’ve just got all kinds of work to do everywhere. I’m disappointed for the kids because they’ve been working their butts off. They’ve been giving us everything we’ve asked for, and we’ve got to continue to grind and work and find ways to improve every week.
I think the quarterback had his best day of the year. He kind of found his groove I thought.
Obviously, these were all teachable moments for our team. When you’re playing as many young people as we’re playing, game day is full of teachable moments, whether you win or you lose. Today we had a lot of them on the negative side of the ledger.
Positives
I think how we finished was good. I know that wasn’t their first group out there, but we moved the ball down the field. Some big plays from our redshirt freshman tight end Billy Humphreys. I thought it was great to see Tre Walker get in the end zone, he’s a true freshman. Montel (Aaron) is a redshirt freshman, so lots of times when you’re playing as a freshman, stuff happens fast and there’s a learning curve to it for them. Hopefully the more all of those young guys play, the more the game of football starts to slow down and they start to see things a little more clearly and the game will get easier for Montel and the game will get easier for those guys. The positive I would say is that we are building a really strong foundation of experience for our football program moving forward.
Challenge to stay positive
For me, it’s not a challenge because what choice do you have? What am I going to do? Mope around and be a baby and cry? No one wants to hear that. My responsibility is to get our team ready to play. And we’ve got eliminate the mistakes. We’ve got to learn while we’re losing. We’ve got to learn from the things we did well today and we’ve got to learn from the things that we didn’t do well. I can focus on the positive and then I can be really firm and hard about the things that were negative or self-destructive.
Tyler Nevens
I’m just proud of that kid. He’s really a serious, diligent kid, and he’s been like that since day one. He’s a good football player because he’s got all the other parts of his life squared away.
Freshman quarterback Montel Aaron
On being down early 14-0
That’s never how you want to start a game, but we knew that there was still a lot of game to play and we never let that get down on us. We’ve been in those situations before. We got up on Hawai’i very quickly and things can change, so we were never really doubting ourselves. We just knew we had to pick up and start playing.
It just shows us that we never give up. As the quarterback of the offense, having the receivers still running 100% on their routes, having the linemen still getting their hot stuff off the ground for you is a really good feeling. We’ll just try not to get too negative and just get ready for San Diego.
Junior defensive tackle Sailosi Latu
I think we tried to prepare for everything, but they were a little bit more physical than we anticipated and we underestimated their offense.
Freshman wide receiver Tre Walker
On his late touchdown
Anytime you score six points, it’s going to feel good. It was nice to get the ball moving. We had struggled a lot in the game, but we fought the rest of the game and that was really nice to see.
On his confidence going forward
We know that we can move the ball. At first, we struggled and we’ve been struggling toward the beginning of the season, but I feel like we are starting to gain momentum. It’s all a process with the new offense and new coaches, but I feel like we’re going in the right direction.
On the turnovers
It’s really just attention to detail. We focus a lot during practice, we just need to translate it to the game. I feel like a lot of the guys have bought in, but it just hasn’t translated yet. We’re going in the right direction and we’re just going to prepare for San Diego State.