AUSTIN – In their second game of the season, BYU traveled to Austin, Texas to face the Texas Longhorns. After playing lock down defense and creating a quarterback controversy for Texas in the first half, BYU’s lack of offense causes them to fall 16-17 in a game they led until about halfway through the 4th quarter.
On their first drive of the game, BYU drove 45 yards in 7 plays, including a 21-yard pass to Ross Apo, to get to the 13-yard line. Suddenly, they couldn’t move the ball any more and had to kick a 30-yard field goal to take a 3-0 lead.
BYU’s defense took over again, forcing another three-and-out as they stopped the run by Foswhitt Whittaker who gained only two yards on first down. Then, when Garrett Gilbert threw a deep pass to Jaxon Shipley on second down, Corby Eason knocked it out of Shipley’s hands to force the incomplete pass. Finally, BYU blitzed on third down and forced Gilbert to throw a hurried pass that was way off target.
After a decent punt return, BYU had about the same result on offense. They were moving the ball nicely, but as soon as they got it inside the 20-yard line they couldn’t do anything else and had to settle for another field goal to make it 6-0.
Gilbert threw an interception to Daniel Sorensen on the third play of the drive to give BYU the ball on the Texas 43, just outside of field goal range and BYU can’t gain a single yard and is forced to punt it away.
BYU got another interception as Travis Uale pulled down a 47-yard pass, but this time BYU had to start the drive on their own 3-yard line. After they failed to get a touchdown three different times with great field position, they started pinned down at their own 3-yard line and drove the entire length of the field and punched in a touchdown on a 6 yard pass to Apo to take a 13-0 lead.
Shortly before halftime, Heaps threw an interception to virtually give the Longhorns the field goal that put the score at 13-3 at halftime.
In their last two possessions of the first half, Texas pulled Gilbert and tried Case McCoy and David Ash at quarterback. Neither did anything spectacular, but it was obvious that Mack Brown, Longhorn’s head coach, was frustrated with how things were going.
In the second half things changed. Texas used a combination of McCoy and Ash at quarterback and called more running plays; the Cougar defense never looked the same. On their first drive of the half, Texas threw one incomplete pass and ran the ball six times for 62 yards. Cody Johnson got the 1-yard touchdown run to bring the score to 13-10.
BYU tried to counter with a touchdown of their own, but once again got to the 15-yard line and were forced to kick a field goal to make it 16-10.
With less than nine minutes left in the game, Texas used both McCoy and Ash in a drive that ended with Johnson getting another touchdown on a 4 yard run to put Texas up 16-17.
BYU had two more chances to try and win the game, but they were unable to get even a single first down either time.
Next Saturday Utah will come to Provo. It will certainly be a fun game to watch.
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