After beating both SUU and BYU in its first two games of the season, the Utah football team is looking to add another win to its resume before entering Pac-12 play.
Utah will be on the road in Southern Calif. to face San Jose State. The Spartans are 1-1 this season. They lost their first game, 45-10, to Tulsa, and then they beat Portland State 66-35 this past Saturday.
Last season, Utah went undefeated in nonconference play, but it also didn’t have to deal with any potential side effects of an energy draining game with BYU.
Every year since joining the Pac-12, when the Utes have faced off with the Cougars they tend to lose the following game. While those losses all came to Pac-12 foes, head coach Kyle Whittingham is aware of the “BYU hangover,” and he thinks it will be his team’s toughest challenge this week.
Another challenge the Utes face is ball security. Utah turned the ball over six times, three fumbles and three interceptions, against BYU — the Utes had an overall total of six fumbles — so Whittingham is changing up the starting lineup. Although Whittingham won’t officially announce who the starting running back will be, it looks like it will be Zack Moss, who was listed at No. 1 on the depth chart, followed by Troy McCormick, who has held that No. 2 position since the beginning of spring camp.
“Before he got hurt in fall camp, he was showing signs of being a very talented running back,” Whittingham said. “He didn’t surprise. But it’s only one game, so he’s got to [perform well] again.”
And with this being the first road test for the Utes, Whittingham hopes his team can understand that this isn’t a vacation, it’s a business trip, and they have a job to do — win the game.
Every year new freshmen enter the fold, and travelling can put a toll on the players, so Whittingham is eager to see how his players handle those demands.
After throwing three interceptions against BYU, Troy Williams will be looking to clean up his game. He was noticeably disappointed in his play, especially because of the pick he threw in the endzone when the Utes could have settled for a field goal on the following play, and he wants to show his teammates he can bounce back, and that bad performance is a thing of the past and it won’t have any lingering effects on his game down the road.
“I’m going to focus on taking care of the ball,” Troy Williams said. “I don’t expect to have a any game like [BYU] again.”
One area that has improved is the play of the offensive line. Whittingham was not happy with the way his o-line played in the first game of the season, and neither were the players. So all week leading up to the BYU game, they worked on their physicality, and they worked on better protecting their quarterback, and it showed against BYU.
“They performed much better, and that 19 play drive in the fourth quarter, that was a thing of beauty,” Whittingham said.
Now, they just have to keep up that same level of intensity and everything should go according to plan from that standpoint on the team. And while the team could start looking into the future and what’s in store for them when they face USC a week after San Jose State, Isaac Asiata is taking it one game at a time.
“It’s more of an attitude,” Asiata said. “When the game is on the line, you got to perform.”
Game time is set for 8:30 p.m. MT.
@kbrenneisen