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PROVO -- The Holy War game Saturday night didn't take long to turn into the, "Holy cow! What just happened game?" BYU and Utah stayed tight heading into half, but like so many times before BYU stalemated in the second half and Utah proved once again they're a second half team.
The Utes struck early when they recovered a bad BYU snap, followed by a worse Jake Heaps decision, in the end zone for the TD.
"Ok, can #BYU please use its mulligan right now? Not the start Cougar fans hoped for or anticipated," tweeted ksl.com news director Graydon Johns.
The Y would get moving, however, and Heaps hit Ross Apo with a beautiful ball to score their third TD of the year. Oh, but don't forget that came after BYU turned the ball over three times and the U once. Up to that point it wasn't a pretty game.
The U made an impressive drive that was capped off by an impressive catch and run TD by tight end Jake Murphy to end the half with Utah up 14 -10. And believe it or not, that would be the ball game.
The U came out and scored right away.
"Wow. A lot of football left to be played, but I'm shocked at how sloppy BYU has been thus far. Didn't see this coming at all," tweeted Spencer Checketts of ESPN 700.
The game then quickly got out of hand. Utah kept forcing and not forcing, turn over after turn over and kept scoring again and again.
Soon the U was up by four scores before the third quarter had even ended.
"For years I lamented that I couldn't see BYU games due to not having The Mountain. *this* is what I was missing? Lame," tweeted @zelph.
Well, it would only get worse for fans like @zelph, and much much better for fans like @BlockU.
"Montana State played Utah harder than BYU," tweeted @BlockU. He may have a biased to the U and therefore an obvious dislike for the Y, but he had a point.
The U continued to dominate and started scoring on long runs between the tackles that were meant to run out the clock. Twitter followers kept asking if the BYU defense had given up, but it's more likely they were exhausted because the offense could not keep the ball for more than three plays.
"So... Is it called running up the score when the defense is doing it all?" tweeted ESPN 700.
To answer the question, no it is not, it's just embarrassing for the other team.
Utah finally took a knee after almost breaking for another TD and ended the game.
Kevin Ferguson from KFAN actually had a tweet for all those BYU fans who were maybe hoping they drank to take the sting out of a total beat down from a hated rival at home. "I feel bad for BYU fans today. Their team let them down and completely failed them. More passion in the stands than on the sideline."
The U showed up in the second half and the Y seemed to head home after the halftime show. To put the whole game in perspective take a look at this stat from KSL SportsBeat reporter Jeremiah Jensen. "This is the largest margin of victory for Utah vs. BYU since a 49-0 win in 1922."
Email: jclyde@ksl.com
