BYU football: Opening drive the only positive for No. 11 BYU in demoralizing 34-7 loss to No. 4 Texas Tech

ARLINGTON, Texas — After saying about a dozen times Saturday after No. 4 Texas Tech pulverized No. 11 BYU 34-7 in the Big 12 championship game that the Red Raiders are ‘the best team in the country,” Cougars coach Kalani Sitake said he would love another shot at his good friend Joey McGuire’s team.

That is just Sitake’s competitive nature coming out, because BYU has had two chances to topple Tech and fell way short both times, be it at Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock or the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Line these teams up 10 times on a neutral field, and Tech probably wins eight or nine. The Red Raiders are that good, well-balanced and well-coached. The gap between the Big 12’s best and second-best teams is quite large.

That was evident after Texas Tech held BYU to a season-low 200 yards and seven points (tied) in another rout. Could the Cougars stay with this juggernaut in Provo? That’s a topic for another day.

Would Saturday’s outcome have been different if BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier had not been hurt on the Cougars’ opening drive? Again, something to chat about in the long offseason.

Suffice it to say, BYU fans will always have Saturday’s game-opening drive to relive, as the Cougars drove 90 yards for a touchdown against a Tech defense that had given up only one other first-quarter TD all season, to Kansas State.

Tech had given up just 13 points in its first quarters all season.

Sione Moa returned to the BYU backfield for the first time since the East Carolina game, and immediately caught a 2-yard pass. Then Bachmeier found Chase Roberts over the middle for 18 yards.

Bachmeier’s 10-yard run on third and 5 was huge, as was his 10-yard throw to LJ Martin to pick up another first down. Offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick then dialed up a “special,” a gadget play in which Parker Kingston took a pitch from Bachmeier and threw a 22-yard pass to Carsen Ryan.

On the next play, however, Bachmeier took the hit that caused the injury on a 1-yard run, and was never the same. Martin found the end zone on a direct snap from the 10-yard line, but that turned out to be all she wrote for the Cougars.

Seven points. Just like last time.

Also just like last time, Will Ferrin missed a field goal that would have gotten the Cougars into double digits. Coincidentally, the Big 12’s third-best team, Utah, lost 34-10 to these same Red Raiders in Salt Lake City.

“We just weren’t executing,” Kingston said when asked why the offense unraveled after the hot start. “We weren’t playing our brand of football, and we let that game get out of hand because we weren’t making plays.”

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Trailing 21-7 late in the third quarter, the Cougars had some life — life that wasn’t entirely sucked out of them after Ferrin’s missed field goal — when Bachmeier seemingly found JoJo Phillips on third and 7 for a nice gain.

However, Phillips dropped the ball after a good hit, and the Cougars had to punt.

On their next four possessions, the Cougars gave up a fumble, an interception, turned the ball over on downs and saw Martin lose a fumble for the first time in his three-year career.

Downfield shots were few and far between, as Tech’s pass rush engineered by its $7 million defensive line left Bachmeier with little time to throw.

“The passing game was shorter underneath stuff,” Kingston acknowledged. “They were just bailing. They didn’t want to get beat over the top, and they made us try to beat them in front of them. We just weren’t playing clean football.”

Now the question becomes: What is Bachmeier’s status moving forward?

“Yeah, always concerned about that,” Sitake said. “That’s not the reason why we lost. I mean, it was part of the reason why he wasn’t able to play his best.

“He is going to be hurting a lot more tomorrow… We made a lot of mistakes. It wasn’t just Bear. He wasn’t reason why we didn’t score enough points. It was a lot of different things.”

Sitake said BYU didn’t have “the right protection going” on Bachmeier’s fumble in the fourth quarter.

“And I thought Texas Tech had a great game plan for trying to eliminate the quarterback run game. We just didn’t make enough adjustments to that.”