Nov. 15, 1999

Armed with their new shotgun offense and a more mature quarterback and wide receiver corps, the BYU Cougars took great pride earlier this season in their boundless confidence that they were never out of a game.

Now, that confidence seems to be shaken, and at the worst possible time: Utah week.

Having been wiped out at Wyoming(31-17) over the weekend, the Cougars must beat the rival Utes on Saturday to win the inaugural Mountain West Conference championship and earn a return trip to the Liberty Bowl. And the Utes suddenly appear to have hit their stride, beating New Mexico 52-7 on Saturday.

"We would have [done] that against New Mexico, too," said BYU quarterback Kevin Feterik.

Probably true.

But since a severe rainstorm held BYU to a 31-7 victory in Albuquerque last month, the offense has produced fewer points each week. It scored 29 in a shutout at UNLV the week after the New Mexico game, then 27 against Air Force and 23 (the defense scored the other touchdown) against San Diego State before managing 17 at Wyoming.

That's fewer than the 18.5 points the Cougars had averaged in the first halves of their first eight games. In their last two, the Cougs have totaled only 20 points before halftime.

"We're going to have to come out and start faster than we have the last couple of weeks," said Feterik. "It sort of caught up with us" against Wyoming.

The result was a loss that ruined the loftier of the Cougar goals for the season -- getting ranked in the top 10, and perhaps finding their way into a Bowl Championship Series game -- knocked them down to 19th in both the AP Top 25 and the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll, and sent them into the Utah game uncertain of how they will respond.

The players all said they will be fine, but Feterik did point out that after the Cougs' previous loss to Virginia, they came out flat the next week and nearly lost at Utah State. But "we have too many good guys on the team to have a breakdown or anything," he said.

The Cougars have had problems protecting Feterik against good defensive fronts, and the Cowboys were able to pressure him early in the game, using only three or four rushers and dropping everybody else back into pass coverage. That problem could be compounded against the Utes, since offensive guards John Skiba and Jason Scukanec are expected to miss the game with injuries suffered against Wyoming. That would leave third-stringer Kam Valgardson to play on the right side.

At least, the Cougars will have running back Luke Staley. He sat out the Wyoming game nursing a calf injury and recovering from surgery on his knee, and the remaining Cougar backs managed only 32 rushing yards and four fumbles -- including one that Naufahu Tahi lost at the Cowboys 1-yard line -- on 17 carries.

"In order to hurt your pride, you have to have pride, and we have a lot of it," said middle linebacker Rob Morris. "We'll be OK. We'll bounce back and get ready to play Utah, get ready to beat Utah and win the championship. That's all we have to do now. We don't have any other options."

Oh, they have one.

But it would represent precisely the kind of collapse that marred last season, when the Cougs won the WAC Pacific Division title in the regular season, only to lose a dispiriting league championship game to Air Force and then get killed by Tulane in the Liberty Bowl.