#7 Utah rips San Diego state to stay unbeaten

Undefeated Utah didn’t try to run up the score against 1-10 San Diego State.  Unfortunately, the Aztecs are so hapless that it happened anyway.  Brian Johnson threw for five first half TDs as the #7 Utes manhandled woeful San Diego State by a lopsided score of 63-14.  The win allowed Utah to clinch at least a share of the Mountain West Conference championship, and they’ll face Beehive State rivals BYU at home next Saturday with an undefeated season and likely BCS bowl appearance on the line.

Utah scored early and often in the first half en route to a 35-7 lead at the break.  The Aztecs turned the ball over via a fumble on the first play from scrimmage, and the game went downhill from there.  Utah scored on its first three possessions and five of their first six as they built the huge halftime lead.  The Utes have won 19 of their last twenty games and that streak was never in jeopardy against the overmatched SDSU squad.

After building an insurmountable first half lead, Utah tried to “go easy” on San Diego State in the second half.  They quit throwing the ball, and played “vanilla” possession football to go scoreless in the third quarter.  In the fourth, however, SDSU became unable to stop even the simplest Ute clock eating rushes.  Utah scored two rushing TDs at the start of the fourth quarter to go up 56-14.  Making matters worse, Aztec QB threw two interceptions to Utah’s Deshawn Richard just over a minute apart, both of which were returned for touchdowns of 89 and 38 yards to give the Utes’ the final margin of victory in a game that wasn’t even *that* close.

Aztec coach Chuck Long didn’t bother with excuses for his team’s dismal performance:

"This is a tough night. Utah is good but we also made them look good. We did everything possible that you can think of to give them part of the game."

San Diego State dropped to 1-10 on the year, which set a low water mark for losses in a season.  Their only victory came on 9/27 against a bad 1-AA/FCS series opponent, the Idaho Vandals.  Putting things in perspective, Idaho has only managed to go 2-9 this year.  This miserable SDSU team isn’t good enough to compete with the top teams in 1-AA/FCS, as evidenced by an opening game loss to championship contender Cal Poly.

While Utah will be engaged in a heavyweight struggle against their hated rivals from Provo, San Diego State will have one last shot at securing a win over a 1-A/FBS team as they host UNLV.  The Rebels have shown some promise this year, but have struggled on the road (1-4) so the Aztecs may have as good as chance to beat a team from college football’s top division as they’ve had all year.