This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Las Vegas • In the postgame celebrations at the Royal Purple Las Vegas Bowl, Utah's defense deserved to party hard for what it had accomplished — a 35-28 win over BYU.
Kyle Whittingham agreed, knowing full well, without his stellar defensive guys, who scored or set up all of the Utes' touchdowns, his team would have walked out of Sam Boyd Stadium losers. "You're not going to lose a lot of games," he said, "when you are plus-five in turnover margin. … We forced those turnovers. We got great pressure from our defense."
Much of the scoring happened in the first quarter, by way of the disruption the Ute front seven put on Cougar quarterback Tanner Mangum. Two of Mangum's interceptions were tipped and a third came when the quarterback was hit as he threw. The fumbles were caused by the defense, as opposed to anyone simply dropping the ball. As mentioned, all five turnovers resulted in Ute touchdowns.
BYU's offense came around to outgain the Utah offense — with 386 total yards and 315 passing yards against the Utes' 197 and 71. But none of that mattered on the scoreboard, from where those most meaningful numbers shined into the Vegas sky.
The whole thing was reminiscent of much of the regular season, during which the Utah defense so often brought food to the table while the offense frequently came to eat and to live off the defense's largesse. That Ute offense was far from explosive and far short of impressive against the Cougars.
On the plus side, as Whittingham mentioned, the O never turned the ball over.
Still, the defense had to do its business, and it accomplished exactly that.
"I think we had the best defense in the Pac-12 this year," Whittingham said. "It was great to see those guys shine today."