Utah wins easily over BYU to remain undefeated

With a BCS bowl bid on the line, the University of Utah played perhaps their best game of the year to defeat Beehive State rival BYU 48-24 in Salt Lake City on Saturday.  Likewise, Utah QB Brian Johnson contributed one of his best performances of the season while Cougars’ signal caller Max Hall suffered through one of his worst career outings. 

Johnson played a near perfect game, with 30 completions on 36 attempts good for 303 yards with 4 TD passes and no interceptions.  In his post game comments, the Utah QB suggested that he considered all of the media hype about BYU’s “explosive offense” a personal challenge:

"We took it as a challenge for our entire offense. All we heard about was how explosive BYU's offense was and how inconsistent we were throughout the entire year. We wanted to show people that when we put it together we can be pretty good."

Meanwhile, BYU’s offense imploded thanks in large part to QB Max Hall’s brutal afternoon.  Hall finished with 205 yards on 21 of 41 passing with no touchdowns, five interceptions and a fumble—accounting for all six of BYU’s turnovers.  Three of Hall’s interceptions were converted into Utah scores, as was his lost fumble.  Hall didn’t have much to say about his performance after the game, instead paying respect to the intensity of the partisan Utah crowd and the Utes’ overall solid play:

"It was a fun game to play in. The crowd was way into it and it developed a lot of momentum for Utah. At times we were able to just play through it. Utah just played a great game tonight, give credit to them." 

The victory gave Utah their second undefeated season in four years with a perfect 12-0 mark.  The 2004 Utes also finished undefeated at 11-0 before going to win the Fiesta Bowl.  Ranked #7 in the BCS standings heading into this game Utah can only wait until the final ranking is announced on December 7th.  Ironically, the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, AZ is once again a likely destination.  In the meantime, Ute coach Kyle Whittingham isn’t going to stress the situation:

"We won't worry about anything we can't control. We are very pleased and feel very fortunate and blessed to be where we are right now.”