PROVO — BYU assistant head coach Ed Lamb has a lot of great memories of his time as head coach at Southern Utah.

The BYU grad spent eight seasons in Cedar City, where he took his first collegiate head coaching job and took a program mired in a 19-game losing streak and turned the Thunderbirds into two-time conference champions and three-time FCS playoff qualifiers.

So excuse him if he is trying not to think too much about that as the Cougars (5-4) prepare to face SUU (5-4) for the first time in program history Saturday at 1 p.m. MT (BYUtv, KSL NewsRadio).

“I’ve had to make a conscious decision to make it business as usual,” Lamb said. “The very honest answer is that those players and coaches that are still at SUU that were there during my team are considered my family, for the rest of my life. I would do anything for them.

“I really have to take that emotion out of it.”

Lamb’s former defensive coordinator Demario Warren is now SUU’s head coach, and many of his former players are still standouts on the team: guys like leading receiver Mike Sharp and leading rusher Malik Brown, among others.

Those players were understandably disappointed when Lamb and fellow BYU grad Jernaro Gilford left for Provo to join head coach Kalani Sitake’s first-year staff.

“That’s a big game,” Brown told the Spectrum and Daily News. “Especially for us. Coach Lamb leaving — that kind of hurt. That’s a personal game, honestly.”

Lamb still reflects on those players with fondness. He smiled as he thought of Sharp’s game-winning touchdown last season against Northern Arizona that clinched the Thunderbirds’ first-ever Big Sky championship. He longingly remembered Brown as one of the best running backs he’s coached.

He even remembered Warren, his former defensive coordinator with whom he still keeps in contact — and wishes the most success, 364 days every year.

“He’s like best coaches should be: he’s consistent. He’s the same person in football that he is outside of football,” Lamb said of Warren. “He’s very conscientious, detail-oriented, and incredibly smart.

“He is one of the hardest-working guys I’ve ever been around. I think his sincerity is something that I felt and knew, and now his team knows that he is the same guy.”

There are plenty of former SUU connections at BYU this season. In addition to Gilford, tight ends coach Steve Clark was the Thunderbirds’ offensive coordinator, while Sitake earned his stripes as an SUU running backs coach — with BYU defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki as one of his pupils.

The Cougar staff, then, also knows what this game means to the Thunderbirds. Considered by some to be located on a remote island three hours south of the rest of the state’s universities, the Thunderbirds will enter LaVell Edwards Stadium for the first time in program history with a significant chip on their shoulder.

Make no mistake; SUU will give BYU its best shot.

“The feel that they can win,” Gilford said. “That was our message, no matter who we played. We felt like we had the guys, and we lifted every day, ran every day, trained every day just like everybody else. We went into every game expecting to win.”

The T-Birds opened Ed Lamb’s tenure with a loss to Air Force in one of the annual FCS “guarantee games” played for exposure, a stage, and a sizeable paycheck. By the time Lamb had departed for Provo, SUU had earned scalps over FBS foes UNLV, South Alabama and Texas-San Antonio.

“It can get your adrenaline going, and you feel on edge,” said BYU lineman Andrew Eide, who played three seasons at SUU. “But I think most of it wears off after a couple plays. The ‘wow’ factor is more during the pre-game tailgate and a crazy game.

“An FCS school, you can tell when they play a big school. The first couple of drives, they are really in the game. They’ve never felt that kind of attention before. There are a lot of eyes on them.”

SUU made $435,000 for playing Utah in its season opener at Rice-Eccles Stadium, according to multiple reports, and will make almost as much for visiting BYU in November.

That’s a significant check arranged by a former SUU head coach who now finds himself wearing the colors of his alma mater on the other sideline.

“It was a game we requested for 6-7 years, and we finally got BYU to look at a date that was mutually available,” Lamb said, before adding dryly, “It was something I was very excited about then, and I’m less excited about it now.”

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Jernaro Gilford only spent two years in Cedar City as a defensive secondary coach at Southern Utah before joining Kalani Sitake’s first-year staff. But when the Thunderbirds visit Provo, the former BYU cornerback will be fighting a lot of emotions.

Saturday’s game is a big game for SUU, and it represents BYU’s chance to clinch bowl eligibility and a spot in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego. But for a team mired in a 19-game losing streak in 2008, the T-Birds have learned to win, no matter the stage.

Their former head coach expects their best shot this weekend.

“I’m sharing more with our guys here, and I’m not sure that really helps them,” he said. “They need to be oriented toward a faceless opponent, but those guys can’t be faceless for me.”

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