I’m writing this the morning after. Hopefully this has given me the chance to cool off a little.
Let’s start with today’s weather update. It’s very Montana-esque today. Which is kind of exciting for me, not so much for the rest of the family. After our snow Friday, Saturday turned out to be a pretty nice day. But then I wake up this morning, it’s snowing, and the wind is howling. It’s 8º right now, the high will be 9º, and it’s supposed to be 6º around 4pm. And with the wind, we’re looking at wind chills around -20º at the worst (it’s -12º with wind chill right now). Just like my mission days!
OK, let’s start with the good. Well, for starters, at least I rode an exercise bike the whole fourth quarter. I don’t know if it was frustration, anticipation, or sick of laying on an exam table. Me and the kids went to the clinic to watch the game. They jumped and ran and played, I watched and grumbled and fumed. So yeah, burned some calories. Sad when that’s probably the good.
Another good, Mike Thomas getting the Pac-10 careers catches record with the last play of the game. That we pretty cool how they worked that in I think. And well deserving. The other good, Tuitama going out the way he did. I was glad to see that as well. Some of you may be asking what’s with the Arizona love. Well, lest you forget, I almost ended up going to school at Arizona. The only thing that tipped the scales for me was the Discovery funds at BYU. There was good on the BYU side. Austin Collie, despite having a “deceptively quiet” night (which I don’t blame him for, more of that in a minute), extended his 100-yard streak. Sweet! Of course this could be his last game as a Cougar. If I were him, and I found out I could make some blow, I’d bolt. And the other good, I think DP (Pita) had a good night as well despite being hampered by injury.
OK, let’s see. Shall we start with the bad?
First up, I love the insight of the emails Melissa always forwards to us. I think they’re very objective, and I find myself agreeing with a lot of it. So, that being said, I think the record speaks for itself. We played pretty much only 4 good teams this year, and we’re 1-3 against them, losing to the best 3 teams on the schedule (actually, I’d put the Wildcats pretty much on par with the Falcons but not up there with Utah and TCU who I think are every bit as good as their records, maybe even a tad better). We are totally outmatched when it comes to coaching. There are not a lot of in game adjustments going on to help the team. We have seen what happens when we go up against good coaches, we’re just not getting it done.
The other part about the program that bothers me a little is just the overall feeling. OK, so I know BYU as an institution is “different”, with different goals/objectives for it’s student. And I would agree that the “image” of the program is exactly what the Church wants it to be at this point. And I commend Coach Mendenhall for getting it to where it is. I guess I’m spoiled, but I’m tired of having a pretty good team each year. I want to have an elite team each year. As in National Championship contender. This could be the Wolverine effect hitting me, as that’s what we expect every year our team here hits the field. And if he hasn’t fallen into that already, Justin will soon as I am sure that is the same feeling every time the basketball teams hits the floor in Chapel Hill. It just seems to me that there is so much focus on the other things that are more important that I fear winning the game might not be as high as it should be when they hit the field. There’s a point where the whole “winning isn’t everything” statement can actually be a detriment.
I guess those are my two biggest frustrations. Surprisingly, the defense isn’t on my list of negatives from last night. We’ve got to remember is that is a ramshackle unit out there put together with spare parts and scotch tape. I think they did ok for what they were asked to do. Grigsby and Thomas didn’t exactly light us up last night. I think we got all we could possibly expect to get from the defense last night. Remember, it’s the offense that is supposed to carry this team, and they could not do that in the least last night.
Also not on my list of frustration is Mitch Payne. Oh, believe me, I was upset as any last night, more with the first miss than the second really. But hey, sometimes bad nights hit players at weird times. Last night was just a bad one for him. At least one of those missed field goals should’ve been a touchdown except for the inept offense. Remember the 3rd and short that lead to 3rd and almost 20 after three penalties IN A ROW! Yeah, you can’t blame that miss on Payne. There was a time when I almost screamed out loud, “Just walk up to the line and go on short for crying out loud!”
And last up, the Utah reference in the title. Utah pretty much beat us twice since I’m blaming them for turning Max Hall into the shell of his former self that he was last night. He was gun shy, that’s all there was to it. You see what happens when someone it too careful, too conserved for fear of making the same mistakes of the past game. He was just a touch long on passes a lot. Just a touch short on passes a couple of times. And just a little too anxious to tuck it and run when the heat was on. There were a couple of times we had perfect routes, perfectly timed, where in past games Hall would wait that extra half second it would take for the receiver to break free that half a step and deliver a strike right where the ball needed to be. That half second turned into scrambles last night. Hall never tried to force anything (except that one to Collie that was intercepted in the end zone). Hall is supposed to be our playmaker, and though he didn’t play horrible at all, and he didn’t have what I would call a bad game, he wasn’t great. He wasn’t even close to our normal Max Hall. Thank you Utah for killing two games for us!
I think that’s it. Oh yeah, the basketball team. So sad. If you haven’t seen the ending of that, try and catch it on ESPN, maybe Youtube. Heartbreaking indeed. Exciting though!