BYU 2009 Official Schedule

BYU recently announced their complete schedule for the 2009 football season. It includes some exciting match ups including, Oklahoma, Florida St, Utah, and TCU for homecoming. Below is the complete schedule.

Sept 5 - Oklahoma (Dallas, TX)
Sept 12 - Tulane
Sept 19 - Florida State
Sept 26 - Colorado State
Oct 2 - Utah State
Oct 10 - UNLV
Oct 17 - San Diego St.
Oct 24 - TCU (Homecoming)
Nov 7 - Wyoming
Nov 14 - New Mexico
Nov 21 - Air Force
Nov 28 - Utah

Home games listed in bold.

BYU gets second straight shutout with 44-0 win over Wyoming

For the second straight week, BYU walked all over their opponent. However, today's offense wasn't quite as impressive this week because the defense did a lot of the work. In both the first and third quarters, the defense turned turnovers into points on the board without the help of the offense.

On the first drive of the game, Wyoming seemed to be making a quick strike. They threw a lateral on the BYU 36 yard line. The pass was incomplete, but Scott Johnson was smart enough to recognize that the incomplete pass was actually a fumbled ball. Johnson scooped up the ball and ran it 64 yards for the score.

That was BYU's only score in the first quarter. The second quarter was when the offense started to get together. BYU scored three times. One on a one yard run from Harvey Unga. The other two came on Austin Collie receptions, including a 62 yard pass from Max Hall.

Collie was Hall's favorite reciever today. He had 8 receptions for 122 yards and two touchdowns. Hall also connected with Harvey Unga in the third quarter for Hall's third touchdown pass.

It was in the third quarter that the defense put their second set of points on the board. Wyoming's quarterback Karston Sween attempted a pass. It was tipped and David Nixon came down with the ball and ran it 17 yards for the score. With the exception of a 31 yard field goal, by Justin Sorensen, that ended BYU's scoring for the day.

BYU pull all of its starters by the mid third quarter. Obviously this was to done in part to preserve the health of the starters and give other's some experience. Some criticize Bronco Mendenhall for not trying to boost the teams stats and look better for the nation critics. Bronco's response was simple. "If that's at the expense of polls, rankings or points, then it's at that expense," Mendenhall said. "I have been around selfish teams that do that. That's not who we will be."

Although BYU's stats only looked "average" in todays win, the nation will have no way on not acknowledging two straight shutout wins by the Cougars.

Player of the Game
This week's player of the game goes to Austin Collie. Collie had 8 receptions for 122 yards and two touchdowns. His long today was 62 yards for a touchdown. Collie has proved to be consistently Max Hall's primary target. During the first two games, many believed that Dennis Pitta was emerging as the Hall's primary reciever. However, in 4 games Collie is averaging 7.5 catches and 96.5 yards per game.

BYU-Wyoming, Pre-game thoughts

Its hard to give your true pre-game thought to this game without being disrespectful to Wyoming. However, I will try.

Wyoming is 2-1 (0-1 MWC). Their two wins came over Ohio and North Dakota State. Both wins were close games that the cowboys easily could have let slip away from them. Their only loss is to Air Force, who came to Wyoming and walked all over the cowboys, handing them a 23-3 loss.

BYU owns the nation's longest winning streak at 13 consecutive wins. They look to lengthen that to 14 this saturday at home where they have not lost to the cowboys since 1987. BYU's high powered passing attack averages 387 yards per game, which is the fifth highest in the country. And BYU doesn't do it with one reciever alone. They keep you guessing while throwing to at least 5 recievers on a constant basis. (That number will shrink just a little with Michael Reed being out for 2-4 week on a knee injury.) The good news for Wyoming is that their defense has held its opponents to under 300 total yards in all three of its games. The bad news is they haven't played anyone with nearly as explosive an offense as BYU and we haven't even talked about BYU's running game yet.

Wyoming's running game, however, is the silver lining in their offense. The combination of Devin Moore and Wynel Seldon has given people trouble this season. Combined they average 158 yards per game. This could be their only hope against BYU, especially since their quarterback Dax Crum is not known for passing. He only has 273 yards this season and 3 interceptions.

Even with Wyoming's solid running game, its hard to imagine that they have much hope against BYU's defense that such out a decent UCLA team last week 59-0. The defense caused 4 fumbles and 1 interception against the team the beat previously ranked Tennessee. On top of that, BYU capitalized by scoring points on every single one of those turnovers. Wyoming is going to have to come up with an attack to combat a BYU defense that Bronco Mendenhall said of the UCLA game that he was impressed with the physical level of play with which his defense played. He said it was probably the most complete game his defense has played since being named the head coach at BYU.

Predicted outcome - BYU 42, Wyoming 3