My Game Summary

[Dan]

So I travelled to the game Saturday. It was nice to see a lot of Cougar fans there. I would guess about 20% were BYU fans.

The three main reasons why I think BYU lost were as follows (in no particular order):

1. (Players' fault) BYU did not make the plays they need to. Max's int was really bad, obviously. So-oto's "fumble" too. Huge plays there. All in all, the players did well enough to win despite the mistakes on the road against a ranked opponent.

2. (Coaching fault) BYU coaches really contributed to this loss in a couple of key ways. The coaches did ok, especially with adapting and figuring out they could move the ball with the TEs and RB dump passes instead of looking to the outside receivers primarily. But a couple things really created problems. At the end of the first half with the ball at the one yard line a three tries to go, BYU had 3 freaking time outs. They should have used one for each play. Instead each hike was hurried and they even had a delay penalty. A TD before the half would have been huge. I blame the couches for losing 4 points there. The people and I who were with me were screaming for them to use the time outs, but they didn't until before the field goal.

Next, the coaches made a blunder by becoming too conservative late in the third quarter and through the fourth quarter on offense. Once BYU got to within 3 points the offensive calls went away a bit from what had been done all through the great 3rd quarter. BYU started running half the time instead of the exclusive TE/RB passes which worked very well. I am sure UCLA was thanking BYU coaches for that. The BYU drive that got the ball down to UCLA's red zone with a chance to win was sort of lucky in converting multiple 3rd and long situations. Had BYU kept running the plays they did in the 3rd quarter they would probably have moved the ball much better.

3. (Referees) BYU lost every single important call in this game. I only remember a couple flags against UCLA which had little impact against them. We could not see the replays at the game, but it looked like Kehl did get his hand under the ball which would have given BYU an int and 6 points, which was completely disallowed. Also the So-oto and Hall fumbles looked like they could have gone either way. Then on UCLA's final drive the referees gave UCLA critical first downs twice with very ticky tac flags. In essence, all referee calls went against BYU and I really feel jobbed by them. Had only one of the critical calls gone BYUs way, I think BYU would have won the game.

A final note. I wish BYU would pull what UCLA does, but not showing any replay that could possibly go against your team. It was very frustrating for cougar fans that UCLA did this, but that is part of the home field advantage and I wish BYU did it. Also, UCLA had an active timekeeper that was helping them. They also would pump music over t5he loudspeaker to drown out some BYU cheering. It was frustrating for BYU fans, but in a way I envy their ability to use their home field advantage to the fullest, which BYUs A+ plan would not allow.

UCLA was very fortunate to walk away with a win in this game.

[SoCalCoug]

No kidding on the timekeeper. The ref had to ask for time to be put back on the clock after virtually every play at the end of the game.

The reason the Jumbotron stopped showing the replays was that they showed Kehl's tipped ball - which clearly didn't hit the ground, only to be followed by the replay ref "confirming" the call.

On So'oto's "fumble", the Jumbotron started only after the UCLA player started running with the ball. And on all the reviewed plays after that, they just didn't show them. They learned their lesson - the refs were exposed by the replay after Kehl's play.