Awww Yeah! BYU 31, TCU 17
Wow! What an amazing game for Mendenhall and the BYU Football Team! Talk about a ground breaking and fantastic game.
Of course, this being one of the most important games in recent BYU football history, I didn’t get to watch it. I was still at work. We released a new version of our product this afternoon. It was really just a maintenance release, but we fixed some major bugs. There were problems with a few changes, and so we didn’t actually get the release pushed to our production servers until after the game was over. And of course, I had to stick around till the end to run a conversion script once it was in production.
So anyway… I listened to the game on KSL and enjoyed every moment when someone wasn’t “bothering” me with work related stuff.
This game showed to be a seriously landmark performance from the Cougars. John Beck was tauted as an “NFL quarterback” by TCU head coach, Gary Peterson. I’m not sure if I agree with that assessment. He wasn’t perfect, but he came up with the big plays when BYU really need them and I think that has been the difference in the two losses this season. This years squad didn’t have someone that would step up and make the big plays. Today, they have several.
Beck passed for 323 yards and completed 23 of 37 attempts. Curtis Brown and Fui Vakapuna didn’t produce the numbers they have in the past, but against a TCU defense that hasn’t given up more than around 50 yards rushing this season (avg 37), the combined 86 yards wasn’t bad at all.
Defense was solid, special teams played well, and no turnovers. In the post-game coach’s show on KSL, they mentioned that in the last 25 years, BYU was 31-3 when they didn’t have a single turnover. Yeah, that’s kind of an obvious statistic to show wins, but that’s a huge difference.
So coming to an end with this game was TCU’s 13 game winning streak (was the longest current streak in NCAA football), 23 made field goals in a row for the TCU place kicker, Manfredini, and the winning streak of the TCU quarterback, Jeff Ballard, who hadn’t lost as a starter (13 starts).
I wonder what this is going to do in the polls. I would be very surprised if BYU gets many votes, but I would hope a few people would stand up and notice. I don’t think TCU will fall out of the top 25 completely, but that’s always possible.
So suddenly I’m really excited about BYU football this season. Not that I wasn’t excited before, but I’m really, really excited now.
Next week:
I really don’t think San Diego State will pose any real threat to BYU this year. They are 0-3 and face San Jose State on Saturday. Now, I can say that, but one of the BYU players should never be looking past any team. You never know how teams get up to play BYU and especially when they are now the conference leader.
BYU 45, SDSU 10