BYU opened their season with a nicely-taken 57-17 win over Air Force as the Cougars resume their spot as the favorites in the Rocky Mountain Conference.
While the conference play is by no means an afterthought for BYU, they are, indeed, expected to win the league. So they can usually spend the fall building toward a challenging non-conference spring schedule that leads them into the playoffs.
Last year was a good year for BYU, but they have been stronger. They made the D1A quarterfinals, but in their loss to Cal they shipped far, far too many points to feel good about it.
This year, then, they start at the bottom of the mountain and did well against what Head Coach Steve St. Pierre dubbed a smart, well-coached, and physical Air Force side.
"We have a lot of new guys," said St. Pierre. "But it's a good squad. We have a bunch of guys coming in off Mission."
That's often a double-edged sword. The students mature and grow on LDS Mission, but they don't play rugby, or even work out that much. And so they've missed some time and it can be a few weeks or months before they are at D1A-levels of fitness.
BYUs space awareness allows them to identify odd-man rushes, and the key beneficiary of that was wing Samuel Green, who sped in for tries at 27, 29, and 61 minutes.
Those two in the middle of the first half were part of a torrid run that basically the put the game away. After Cameron Connors and Ethan Nelsen had scored for the Cougars, Case Reidhead's try for Air Force had made it 12-5, which is how it stayed until 24 minutes in.
Then the floodgates opened. First was rumblin', bumblin', stumblin' charge by flanker Tione Tuionetoa for a try. Then Green cut up the middle on a set play off a lineout. And then, off another penalty, BYU shook things up when flyhalf Victor Mataele opted not to find touch. Instead he tapped and then launched a perfectly-weighted wiper kick for Green to chase down.
