BYU Sports

I am waiting here in the Salt Lake airport for my flight to Denver, where I will spend the night before making the two-hour drive to Laramie in the morning for the BYU-Wyoming football game. Seems like a good time to clean out the ol’ notebook of the notes and comments I’ve gathered this week from BYU coaches and players.

Here is what the Cougars had to say about playing Wyoming this week:

Running back Manase Tonga: “Wyoming has always been a tough team to run against, and a tough defense to play against the past few years. So they fly around, they make tackles and they are really physical. Our focus is going to have to be getting to where we need to be, and then sustaining those blocks. Our running backs, we just got to take what they give us.”

Defensive end Jan Jorgensen on Wyoming overall: “They play really good defense. Their defense does a good job. It always seems like Wyoming’s defense does a good job of keeping them in football games, and then their young quarterback does a good job also at creating things, moving around, making things happen back there. So they are an impressive football team.”

Jorgensen on Wyoming’s freshman QB, Austyn Carta-Samuels: “He has been doing a great job, especially for a freshman. He has a lot of confidence out there and their coaches have a lot of confidence in him, and he does a very good job....He’s on his way to becoming a great quarterback.”

Jorgensen on Wyoming’s weather and fans: “We hope [the game] is not in November, and then it is. I have been watching a lot of weather forecasts, and it doesn’t look like it will be that bad, so we are alright.... I can only speak for the last time I was there. We were fortunate enough to jump on them pretty fast and they were never really in the football game. So I think that mellowed them out. So I hope that happens again this year.”

BYU quarterback Max Hall on Wyoming’s crowd: “I know they are going to play us tough. They always do, man. They always want to beat us. Really, every team in the conference wants to beat us, no matter if we are undefeated or if we haven’t won a game in the conference, they still want to beat BYU. So they are going to play us tough. They have a new head coach who is going to get them ready to go, and it is going to be a battle.”