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PROVO — BYU comes to play for the whole game, but something special seems to happen for the Cougars during the final quarter of play.
BYU has allowed just 34 points in the fourth quarter through seven games. That's an average of 4.8 points a game in the closing quarter. Among those include four fourth-quarter shutouts.
"(Coach Mendenhall) always emphasize whoever plays the hardest all four quarters is going to win the game," said linebacker Fred Warner about the fourth-quarter trend. "So that's what we've been doing, and it's been working."
The fourth quarter against Cincinnati saw the Cougars hold the Bearcats to negative yardage in the final quarter. The greatest contribution to the stellar defensive play might belong to the Cougar defensive line.
The Cougars had eight sacks in Friday's victory. The last time BYU had eight sacks in a game was in 1997.
Linebacker coach Kelly Poppinga was impressed with how well the Cougars played in the nickel package.
"A lot of (those sacks were) four and three-man pressure, we weren't even blitzing," he said.
Bronson Kaufusi (3.0 sacks), Travis Tuiloma (1.5 sacks) and Tomasi Laulile (0.5 sacks) all were standouts in Friday's game.
"Masi is a freak athlete. He came out of high school with an NFL body," said Sae Tautu of his teammate Laulile. "He has the perfect body for a 3-4 defensive end. Like Travis, he takes a lot of blockers, but he's athletic enough to get in there and make plays."
Laulile has seen an increase in defensive reps as the season has gone on. The 6-foot-4, 280-pound defensive end said the key for his increased role has been effort.
Laulile recognized the return of Tuiloma was key to the defensive success.
"Travis he really just closed the pocket down, that's really what helped us this game," Laulile said.
Although the defensive lineman were credited for most of the sacks Friday, the defensive backs have played a large role in those happening.
"A lot of those sacks were because our DBs were playing sticky and not allowing anyone to get open," said Sae Tautu.
Although that wasn't necessarily the case to begin the game, the Cougar defensive backs clamped down in the second half allowing just 220 yards of passing to a Cincinnati team that averaged 385 up until meeting the Cougars.
"We settled in and made some really good adjustments," Poppinga said. "We played good those last three quarters, and we gave ourselves a chance to win."
The Cougars will face a weak Wagner team Saturday. Wagner (0-6) is an FCS team located on Staten Island, New York.
Players are a little bit split on the difficulty of preparing against Wagner.
Laulile understands the difficulty of finding motivation against a team that BYU will almost surely pummel.
"Ya, it's tough, but we have each other to keep ourselves motivated," he said.
The Cougars aren't taking it easy this week though.
"We're not treating this week any differently, if anything the coaches are harder on us this week," said Warner.
Tautu views Saturday's game as another step toward a larger goal.
"We have a chance of going 10-2. Whether it's Wagner or Ohio State the focus is to go undefeated for the rest of the season," he said. And preparing hard for this game will help us with the next." David Boyle is a student at Brigham Young University studying journalism. He is from Monticello, Utah, and is thrilled to be covering BYU football and basketball for fall 2015. Follow David on twitter @dboyle119
