Las Vegas Bowl: BYU and Arizona

In a couple hours the Las Vegas Bowl will kick off and pit the BYU Cougars against the Arizona Wildcats. Everyone is reporting that BYU has the advantage, and why not? They are 10-2 and ranked #17 in the Nation. And while those 2 losses were to ranked conference rivals TCU and Utah, BYU still has a lot to prove. Their second win of the season, for instance, was 28-27 over the winless Washington Huskies in a game that an unsportsman-like conduct call took more of a decisive part in the game than it should have. All in all, besides TCU and Utah, the Cougars didn’t play that tough of competition.

Supporters of BYU will point to the 424 points scored during the season against the 254 points allowed. The one problem for those Cougars, though is Arizona scored 445 points and allowed 256 in the same number of games. So how then did the Wildcats go 7-5? They play in the Pac-10. Three of their losses came against USC, Oregon and Oregon State who are all ranked in the top 25. They also had a convincing victory over then-#25 California and blew out rival Arizona State in the last game of their season. This is not going to be the pushover Arizona that they have been in past years.

Players to watch include BYU’s quarterback Max Hall who had 3,629 yards and 34 touchdowns passing and receiver Austin Collie who took 95 receptions from Hall for 1,419 yards and 15 touchdowns. Arizona answers with a good passing/running duo of Willie Tuitama (2,763 yards and 21 touchdowns) and Nic Grigsby (1,066 yards and 12 touchdowns).

This should be a fun game to watch, but in the end, I am going with the slight underdog Arizona to pull out the upset because they had more games to get them bowl-ready during the season. Arizona 34- BYU 27.

InGameNow is sponsoring the Gunaxin Blog Bowl. Check them out for more coverage of the Las Vegas Bowl.