Following last week’s loss to Oregon, No. 19 BYU bounced back Saturday night as the Cougars pulled away for a 38-24 victory at LaVell Edwards Stadium.
With the victory, BYU’s dominant streak against Wyoming continued as the Cougars have not lost at home to Wyoming since 1987.
After going down 10-7 early in the second quarter, the Cougars outscored the Pokes 31-14 the rest of the way to improve to 3-1 on the season. With the loss, Wyoming dropped to 3-2 on the year.
Jaren Hall had another outstanding performance as the junior completed 26-of-32 passes for 337 yards and four touchdowns in the win. With another mistake free game, Hall set a BYU record as the 6-foot-1, 205 pounder became the first quarterback in BYU history with three separate interception-free streaks of 100+ pass attempts.
Hall’s 337 passing yards were the second most in his career — he had a career best of 349 yards against Virginia in 2021. It was also just the sixth time he’s surpasses 300+ passing yards. During the first half, Hall also surpassed 4,000 career passing yards, putting him 20that BYU QB to hit 4,000 career yards.
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“He’s (Jaren) poised and can make all the throws,” said Wyoming head coach Craig Bohl. “He’s excellent. He played really well tonight. There’s a lot of good ones out there, but he’s the best one I’ve seen this year.”
Hall’s primary targets on Saturday were Keanu Hill and Brayden Cosper who combined for 218 receiving yards and three touchdowns. Both stepped up and filled in nicely with Gunner Romney and Chase Roberts out.
Hill had a career night with 160 receiving yards and two touchdowns as the sophomore helped put the game out of reach. Hill’s 68-yard touchdown reception was also the longest pass play of the season.
Brayden Cosper also had a career night as the junior hauled in four passes for 58 yards and also recorded his first touchdown of his career. The 6-foot-3 Utah native caught the go-ahead touchdown with four seconds left to play in the second quarter to give the Cougars the spark they needed to roll in the second half.
Rushing Attack: It wasn’t pretty, but the Cougars got the job done in the end. After consecutive three-and-outs to start the game, BYU was able to get the rushing attack going as the Cougars racked up 188 rushing yards for an average of 6.3 yards per carry. This was a significant improvement after the Cougars averaged less than three yards per carry in the last two games.
Whether it was due to injuries, or scheme, Miles Davis was the featured back Saturday night. Davis, a freshman, and who is listed as the No. 3 running back on the depth chart, made some mistakes, but the 6-foot-2, 210 pound back more than made up for it with big runs throughout the night, en route to his career night.
“We were looking for who had the hot hand,” said BYU head Coach Kalani Sitake. “You can only blame the offensive line for so long. Miles did some really good things us for tonight. At the end of the day we are looking for who has the hot hand.”
Injuries: The injury bug continues to bite the Cougars as a number of players either didn’t play, or got injured on Saturday. Is there a team in the nation that is as unlucky as BYU?
Here’s the list of players who played and got hurt, or who didn’t end up playing: Puka Nacua, Josh Larsen Chase Roberts, Gunner Romney, Malik Moore, Max Tooley, Kaleb Hayes, Gabe Summer, Earl Tuioti-Mariner, Kingsley Suamataia
Up Next: BYU vs. Utah State (Sept. 29).
