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Locked On Cougars - Daily Podcast On BYU Cougars Football & Basketball

BYU Football & Kalani Sitake BOOST Big 12 Outlook With Dominant Game 1 Showing

The BYU Cougars are 1-0 after they blew out the Southern Illnois Salukis 41-13 Saturday night at LaVell Edwards Stadium and Jake Hatch said that his takeaways after his film review lead him to the believe that this is a BYU football program that is ready to surprise folks in the Big 12 Conference as they showed their resolve in beginning the season with a dominant showing.

Jake then talked about the latest Football Percentage Index numbers as they improved their chances of reaching a bowl game as well as improving their odds of upsetting the SMU Mustangs Friday night when they take on SMU in an ACC-Big 12 clash and Kalani Sitake will be looking to show that Brigham Young University (BYU) is a force to be reckoned with.

Finally, the show wrapped up with some BYU recruiting news as a pair of teammates from Maple Mountain High School in Jag Ioane and Uhila Matekitonga Finefeuiaki Wolfgramm as they got a start on the 2027 recruiting cycle along with notes on the results over the weekend for BYU women's soccer and BYU women's volleyball over the weekend.

Duration:
32m
Broadcast on:
02 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

The BYU Cougars are 1-0 after they blew out the Southern Illnois Salukis 41-13 Saturday night at LaVell Edwards Stadium and Jake Hatch said that his takeaways after his film review lead him to the believe that this is a BYU football program that is ready to surprise folks in the Big 12 Conference as they showed their resolve in beginning the season with a dominant showing.

Jake then talked about the latest Football Percentage Index numbers as they improved their chances of reaching a bowl game as well as improving their odds of upsetting the SMU Mustangs Friday night when they take on SMU in an ACC-Big 12 clash and Kalani Sitake will be looking to show that Brigham Young University (BYU) is a force to be reckoned with.

Finally, the show wrapped up with some BYU recruiting news as a pair of teammates from Maple Mountain High School in Jag Ioane and Uhila Matekitonga Finefeuiaki Wolfgramm as they got a start on the 2027 recruiting cycle along with notes on the results over the weekend for BYU women's soccer and BYU women's volleyball over the weekend.

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It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Five-hour energy shots give you the feeling of alertness and energy you need to get in the zone and get things done. With zero sugar, a convenient portable size and coming in several flavors like watermelon tropical burst or my personal favorite grape, it's exactly what you need to get through the day. If you're looking to refinance or get a loan right now, let me tell you about Intercap Lending. Intercap Lending is one of the largest independent lenders in the country. They are hyper-responsive, they embrace change and their borrower experience is absolutely fabulous. At Lockdown, we have our own personal loan officer, Intercap Lending. His name is Steve Carter and if you call him and tell him you're locked on, you get the corporate discount. But more than that, what's so great about Steve Carter is the reviews at Lockdown that we continually get about Steve. Mike Curtis emailed me to say, "I just wanted to thank you for your network. We just refied with Steve Carter. It was so incredibly easy. I can attest to it. I got my loan done with Steve Carter." Who else? Richard Gordon emailed me and said, "Thank you so much for promoting Intercap Lending. We used them earlier this year. Steve was amazing and Steve is amazing. Call him at 385-885-385885-28, tell him to lock down, send you Intercap Lending, NMLS #190465. For more information, visit intercaplending.com. The BYU Cougars are now one and no on the season thanks to a dominant showing Saturday night at Lavelle at Word Stadium. What do we learn after reviewing the tape? We're talking about that and also looking at how this affects BYU's chances of going to a bowl game this season as well. It's all ahead on today's show. You are locked on Cougars, your daily podcast on the BYU Cougars. What's up everybody, I'm Jake Hatch, your host here on locked on Cougars, resident BYU Insider. Thank you for making locked on Cougars, your first view and/or listen to the day and they get to all of you who are every dayers with us right here on your original daily podcast focused on the BYU Cougars. Today's show is brought to my friends over at 5-hour Energy Use the promo code locked on CFB, receive 20% off your order at 5hourenergy.com, offer only valid until the end of the month September 30th and cannot be combined with other promotions. Once again, check it out at 5hourenergy.com using the promo code locked on CFB. Alright, let's dive right in on today's show. As we do during the football season, I go back and re-watch the entirety of each BYU game and on Monday, I like to call it a film review Monday. It's a simple term but we look back at what we learned from the previous game for the BYU football program and we spend essentially the rest of the week looking ahead to the next opponent in this case. It'll be SMU on a Friday night, so a short week for BYU, got to get right into prep mode today, obviously getting themselves ready for that trip down to Dallas. But looking back at the game against Southern Illinois, I talked about it on our postcast edition of the podcast and just a quick tip to make sure you don't miss those that come out after I'm done with my radio responsibilities late Saturday night, early Sunday morning and some circumstances, essentially giving you my initial takeaways from the game, getting your feedback and the like on the show. But as I went back and watched the tape for BYU, my feeling on BYU's performance overall against Southern Illinois didn't change much because I really think it was a phenomenal showing all things considered for the BYU Cougars. The one thing I was looking forward to for BYU going into that game is I wanted to see them get some of the swagger and mojo back into this program. These are pretty downtrodden teams, think about over the last nine months or so, they have been told time and time again, "Y'all aren't nothing, you guys are going to finish a dead last in the big 12," and now they're picked 13th out of 16 teams, but they were being very, very lightly thought of by a lot of the prognosticators out there about this season. And they still very well could end up near the bottom of the table. But I think that game against Southern Illinois, no matter the opponent, no matter how it came, the win I think did some good for this BYU football program. I think these players now realize, "You know what, maybe we're not as bad as everybody tells us we are." And I watched that tape back, and you can tell BYU as a game started, they were still a little bit tight, and the thing is Southern Illinois said, "You know what, we're going to force you guys to really break us out of what we want to do defensively." The one play re-watching it that I really felt like ignited everything for BYU in this game was the deep ball to JoJo Phillips. And I know that's easy to say. We have a 57-yard touchdown pass that's pinpoint accurate, and the guy like JoJo Phillips just runs underneath a ball from Jake Retsloff and is celebrating in the end zone. Yeah, it's easy to say that it ignited the BYU Cougars, but think about it. Leading up to that, there were so many things on film that I saw that BYU was just a little tight, and that term is nebulous, I get that. But any of you have watched football for any length of time know what I'm talking about. You're playing essentially not to lose, you're not playing fast and loose, you're not playing to go out there for the love of the game. And that's what I saw finally when Jake uncorked that deep one to JoJo Phillips, you can kind of tell his team's like, "All right, we're good, let's do this thing." Now, the other part about this is I will say this, Southern Illinois started that game and said, "We are going to force BYU to loosen us up in terms of our run fits." They had safeties routinely, five and six yards off the ball, when typically most safeties will probably play 10 to 12 yards off the ball. They brought guys into the box saying, "Okay, force us out of this. Force the ball down our throat or force us to back off with the deep ball." A good friend of the podcast here, Travis, I'm going to give you a year of props because Travis texted me in the lead up to this game on a lockdown Cougars insider group and said, "Jake, the philosophy BYU needs to adopt in this game is to pass to set up the run." And I quibbled with it a little bit, we went back and forth as to why, but as that game unfolded and especially I can say that deep ball that went to JoJo Phillips, essentially it opened up everything that BYU tried to do the rest of the game when it came to the run game. It forced Southern Illinois to back their safeties off and have to obviously leave safeties over the top to help protect against deep balls. The other part about this rewatching this game, a lot of people out there, I've got to make sure I get the notes right here, yeah, I'm looking at my phone, 47 rushes, just 3.8 yards per carry. There's some angst around the fact that BYU couldn't get north of 4 yards per carry. There is a lot of work to be done still in the run game, but the one thing that BYU proved was that run game set up everything else they tried to do, think about it. What touchdown does the Jake connect on? Look back at those plays, their play action. Those were all set up by the fact that BYU jammed that ball down Southern Illinois throughout time and time and time again and made them absolutely bite on the fakes. It comes off that, tosses the ball down the field, Wanda Matha Abba Taase was a great throw I thought, obviously Jojo Phillips is the highlight real play because it's a career long for Jake Retsloff, everything was predicated upon a opening up the rushing attack by throwing the ball. But then once you had that run game going, play action off of it and really make Southern Illinois pay. I was actually really, really pleased with the overall cohesive nature of how BYU played in this game. A couple of guys that stood out to me on tape, let me pull this up here. First thing is, I think Jake Retsloff, his performance, I thought it was very, very solid. He was 20 of 30, that's 66.7% folks, and I counted at least three what I consider to be drops from a receiver, so that would put him at 23 out of 30 had those been brought in, and then I also counted what I consider to be three misses by Jake Retsloff. Now, you say three misses, there are three throws I saw in that game that Jake, I'm sure, is looking back at film saying, you know what, I probably should have had that throw there. So you think about it, if he had those six passes of the ten he had incompletions on, so you would have gone from 20 of 30 to 26 of 30. That would have pushed him into the 80% category in terms of completion percentage. He was really, really close to having a phenomenal game, and as multiple people have pointed out, Jeff Hanson, as well as Casey Lundquist over there at Cougar Sports Daily, part of Sports Illustrated, Jake was one of the highest-rated players according to PFF Grades for BYU. That's awesome to see. Remember, this was a guy that was lambasted, was thought to be no good, he couldn't get the job done for BYU, and he proved he could get it done. Other things I liked in this game, I really liked what I saw from Kayla BTN, a similar circumstance. PFF Graded him out as the best offensive lineman for BYU, and wait for it, the PFF grade for run blocking gets you at the highest run blocking grade across the entire offensive line for BYU? Yeah, the man who seemingly couldn't get the job done a season ago, Kayla BTN. He looks like a man reborn out there. He was very, very good at left tackle from BYU. I think it's a testament to the work that TJ Woods has done with that young man in particular. I thought the offensive line across the board was quite solid. No fault starts, no administrative penalties, we would like to say. The holding call on Connor Pay, and we'll talk with him this week about it, I thought it was ticky-tack at best, but kind of par for the course for how bad the officiating was in that game overall. One other thing here is the BYU's defense. Some of you are wondering, well, why is there so much inconsistency on defense? I watched that game back, and BYU is rotating four and five guys at different positions throughout that game. The rotation was as heavy as I literally have ever seen it for BYU in that game. I think the philosophy was this is the game, we're going to get a good look at everybody in-game. We'll go back, reevaluate it, and then starting with SMU, you'll see those rotations tighten up quite a bit. I saw five different safeties at points, different parts of the field, guys like Tanner Wall who started the game. The next series, there was another guy out there, Tommy Prass, who saw Falatau saw Tawala, who saw Crue Wakely, Ethan Slay, I'm just looking at the safeties in particular. The defensive line, everybody I can think of that was suited up on the D line, saw time in this game, and evidence of that was that BYU's team captain, one of the best defensive linemen they've got, Tyler Batty, I had him down for one tackle and one QB hit the entire night. You can expect against SMU going forward, you're going to see a lot more of him on the field versus the heavy rotation BYU had in that game. It felt like BYU was using the game against Southern Illinois to get an extra look on tape at each one of these guys on defense, and then you'll tighten it up from here with the rotations. It was a really, really interesting thing to see, literally series by series, multiple guys getting multiple looks at different positions. I think that was a decision made going into that game to get a heavy look at guys. Other things, Evan Johnson, pay attention to this young man. He was very, very good, now that disputed a pass from Southern Illinois that should have been ruled incomplete, he was right in position, he was right there, and I have heard whispers about Evan Johnson being a very solid player, but he was the fourth man on the depth chart at cornerback for BYU in this game. Obviously, you have Jacob Robinson and Mark Collins leading the way. Morrie Bomba, who figures to be number three, was injured and unable to play in this game. Evan Johnson stepped up, and I thought it was actually very, very good for BYU. Keep an eye on Evan Johnson, number 21. He was a really, really, I thought high-level player in that contest, and then the final note I got for you guys in terms of other guys I was paying attention to, I really liked what I saw from Blake Mangleson along that defensive line. His move from defensive end to defensive tackle looks like a stroke of genius. Whoever ultimately decided to do that, whether it was Jay Hill, Seone Puha, deciding, "Hey, I need that guy on the interior." I'm still a bit concerned at the lack of "Girth" from BYU, because John Nelson and Blake Mangleson, who I figure will be, are starting two defensive tackles right now for BYU. Either one of them, I think, are breaking 290 right now. They're probably weighing 285 a pop, but their speed was really, really evident in this game. I thought Blake Mangleson in particular stood out to me on tape. Once again, I go back to what I said to start off this podcast, is that my feeling about the performance for BYU overall makes me actually feel a lot better about BYU's chances going in to their game against SMU in the rest of the season, because I think it got some of that mojo, some of the swagger, kind of them feeling good about themselves. It's not perfect by any means. I would grade it out probably as a B+ effort overall across the board for BYU. I'd give the offense probably an A- and give the defense probably an A- as well. Special teams kind of brings it down to probably say a B- on the special team, so kind of brings it to where I'd probably say it's a B+ a- performance, but there's a lot to build on for BYU, and that should be something that you should take confidence in about this squad. Well, how do the metrics say that that game affected BYU's chances of getting to that sixth win in bow eligibility this fall? Well, ESPN's Football Percentages Index, they call it FPI, it had its say on what it projects for BYU, and we'll talk about that next, right here, on locked on Cougars. Today's show is about to you by our friends, over at 5-hour energy. Now, 5-hour energy here for you guys to get you through your day. A lot of us hit the wall in the afternoon, trust me, I do early morning radio. Mid-afternoon, I am almost dead to the world at points, it feels like at times, but the nice part is tied up to lunch, more than 70% of us hit that wall after our lunch time break, let a 5-hour energy help you leap over the wall instead of crashing into it and help you get through the rest of your day and have that energy. 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Heard that right, promo code locked on CFB to get 20% off, remember, this offers only available until September 30th. On one order and cannot be used with other promotions, the code is not good on subscription orders either, so go to 5hourenergy.com today and take advantage of the offense, locked on CFB as the promo code, at 5hourenergy.com. Thank you once again for making locked on Cougars, your first listen of the day. If you've not done so already, make sure you check out our friends over the locked on college football podcast. Spencer McLaughlin has got your look at everything going on nationally, we're kind of hyper-focused here on BYU, but if you want a better feel for overall when it comes to college football, check out locked on college football wherever you get your podcasts, also available on YouTube, and it's proud to be part of the locked on podcast network, your team, every day. All right, as I mentioned, ESPN's FPI, the Football Percentages Index, re-ranks these games for BYU shortly after each one goes final, and obviously it jostles around and it gets affected by the win and loss and how the win or loss came for these programs. What does it say for BYU's chances of getting to a sixth win this season after the game against Southern Illinois? Well it has a positive impact, so obviously when you get a win it's going to make the computers think, okay, they got a better chance here. The nice part is, is BYU, according to most of our sports books out there, our friends at FanDuel, I have this as well, have BYU as a double-digit underdog going up against SMU this Friday down there in Dallas. I saw it open up at 10 points across most of the sports books, excuse me, including FanDuel, but what does that say for BYU's chances? Well Football Percentages Index from ESPN had BYU with a 19.7% chance to beat SMU in the preseason. After the win against Southern Illinois, they boosted their chance to 21.3%, so relatively negligible increase, but an increase in terms of their chance to win all the same. The other part about this is, if you look at the overall percentages across the board for BYU, the Cougars, which were projected to win 4-5 games by the FBI, 5 points 2 was the projection in the preseason. It is boosted to 6.8 after week 1. Now, once again, this will be adjusted week by week, but the projection is to go from not making a bull to being 7-5 potentially at the end of the season based on the week 1 performance. That should lead you to think the BYU's got a really good chance this season to make some noise out there. Now, let's also acknowledge the fact that BYU still has to face the meat and potatoes portion of their schedule. They will play all 5 of the preseason ranked big 12 teams. Now, obviously, you have Kansas State to open up big 12 players. You're going to have Arizona coming in. You've got to face off against Oklahoma State. You've got the renewal of the Holy War game against Utah, and obviously you still have Kansas out there as well. It's going to be a really, really tough slate of games for BYU, but ESPN and their numbers, they simply crunch numbers. This FBI, it takes in to no account personal bias in the light. It simply looks at numbers and then spits out what it believes will happen for BYU, and it believes that BYU is a better team than it was anticipating going into the season. Am I saying anything that any of you probably are going to disagree with? I don't think so, but you look at it, BYU is going to look at wins potentially as it points out against the likes of Houston and Wyoming. They've got major boosts in terms of the overall win numbers there. Wyoming, after they got absolutely smashed by Arizona State, Wyoming as a 79.2% chance of BYU winning on the road in Laramie. Houston, who got thoroughly dominated by UNLV at home, that's at 80.8%. Those are the top two in terms of BYU's chances of winning those games. The next highest is Baylor at 39.8%. You're going to have work to do, speaking of the Cougars, but the thing is, you look at each one of these numbers, all of them except for what I saw two, so yeah, only two of them. UCF in Utah, the back-to-back road games for BYU, stretching late October to early November. Those are the only two games after week one that the numbers went down. No, excuse me, I apologize, Arizona State also went down, so those three went down after week one performances across the board, but FBI's projected win total for BYU has them at 6.8 after week one and also gives them a 43% chance of winning, reaching ball eligibility this season. That's the type of stuff that winning the games that BYU wins, like they do against Southern Illinois, that's going to make people think, "Okay, they got a fight and chance here." I didn't think coming into the season that BYU was an absolute disaster waiting to happen. I think some of you probably thought that, but the other thing is, they had a lot to prove, and I think that game against Southern Illinois is going to show some people, "Hey, this is a team that's still got some pride in it. They're not out there just going through the motions." The other part about it is, I looked back at last season, and the fight BYU put up against both Oklahoma and Oklahoma State with their back against the wall showed me everything I felt like I needed to see about this team. No, they didn't win the games. I get that, they did not win those games, but what they showed in those games was their refusal to essentially back down and just say, "Oh, yeah, we're screwed here. We can't win in this circumstance." They refused to say die. The whole adage of Goonies never say die. Well, that's kind of what BYU's whole mentality was. They were fighting for boy eligibility last season. They're very easily. The caliber of opponent speaking of the Oklahoma Sooners, and obviously the Oklahoma State Cowboys, BYU could have said, "You know what? This season's over. Let's just mail it in, and let's get through this," and obviously look towards the offseason. They actually did the opposite. They kind of said, "You know what? We're going to go out there, and we're going to absolutely punch until we can't punch anymore to use the boxing analogy." If we come through with a big win and a big knockout, and we get a chance to go to the postseason, great. They put the fight in there, and I think that the losses overshadowed that fight from this team. I think the numbers now from this ESPN/FPI indicate that all of us, I'll include myself in this conversation, looked at BYU and judged them probably a little too harshly when it came to the five-game losing streak to end the year. There were not very many good vibes, obviously, in the losses to the likes of West Virginia, but when you came as close as you came against the Oklahoma Sooners and then obviously in double overtime against Oklahoma State to end the season, I think it showed the BYU refused to give in, and to essentially say, "Yeah, we're going to mail this in," because I think they understood what they were up against, and these numbers now indicate after the win against Southern Illinois. This is a team that's still got a lot of pride, it's still got some talent. Is there a need for more talent? No doubt. This is a team that's far from being the elite of the elite when it comes to the big 12, but there is a backbone with this team, and I think they reflect kind of the steely nature. Klani Satake going into the season, remember last week, we talked about it. He had a pretty hard edge to him during that Monday press conference last week, and I don't care what you guys say, I've listened to this guy's press conferences and talked with him one-on-one multiple times. That was fairly edgy from him. I think his team backed up that edginess and went out there and put on a performance that said, "You know what? We know we're being overlooked here. We're going to show you all what we got in the tank," and I'm happy for it. I love when I get a chance to obviously eat crow in a way when I was doubting some of what BYU might be able to do this year, but the goal for me still remains. Just get to six wins. Anything beyond that this year, I think is gravy, and I know that sounds artificially low, and it feels like I might be setting the bar for BYU too low in your mind, but they were five and seven a season ago. Can you get to bowl eligibility and show that you're making progress along the path here? You can, and obviously that will obviously require grinding out five more wins at some point this season, and be great to get the second one this weekend against SMU, even if the FBI numbers believe that you have a one-in-five shot, really, of winning that game. I don't think SMU is insurmountable by any means. Just watching the game against Nevada a couple weeks ago in Week Zero, that SMU team looked imminently beatable. They looked like a team that was very, very undisciplined, and one thing I liked about BYU from Saturday night was their discipline was very, very evident in that game against Southern Illinois. If you can be the more disciplined team more often than not, you're going to give yourself a fight and chance in those games, and I know it's a road game, and BYU has to travel to Texas, but I'm feeling pretty good about this SMU game at the outset of this week. Now, could that change the week progresses? Sure, but I feel like BYU knows what they're up against, and they're ready for the fight, and they're going to be willing to go in there and put it all on the line when they take on the Mustangs. They've got history with the Mustangs as well, and we'll discuss that throughout the week as well, because you can go all the way back to 1980, and the famed holiday bowl, the Miracle Bowl for BYU, and we'll maybe do a little bit of a history lesson on BYU and SMU's history a little bit later on this week as well. So, numbers overall, I think very positive for BYU and reflecting, I think that this team, they've got more in the tank and more fight in them than I think many of us may have been giving them credit for coming off of last season. Alright, we'll finish up today's show with a quick look at what happened over the weekend for other BYU sports as well, as two offers that went out over the weekend, BYU beginning work on the 20/27 recruiting cycle with a couple of offers that went out after the win over Southern Illinois. We'll delve into that next as we continue on right here on Locked On Cougars. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Ultimate GM. Now, Ultimate College Football at H.C. is a brand new game that Ultimate GM has just launched, and the best part is it's an amazing game and simulation that allow you to step into the shoes of being a college head coach and lead your program to glory. Think of it this way, it's the off-field stuff that you see in EA Sports College Football 25 without having to deal with a lot of the other stuff that goes on in that game. It's just one facet of this, but the nice part is you're going to kind of sit behind the scenes, make the right decisions on hiring your coaching staff, you oversee training camps, handing out your school scholarships to each athlete, and more importantly, you control every crucial detail of your program to make sure that it is operating at peak capacity, and then in-game, you're responsible for calling the offensive play. So essentially, your strategy not only determines the success of your football season on the gridiron, but it also shapes the future and legacy of your program as well. The nice part about Ultimate College Football at H.C. is it's 100% online, it has no ads, it's 100% play-look, excuse me, not online, but offline, excuse me there. You can play on the go as you want and when you want, and of course you have a special offer for Locked On Cougars listeners. Use the promo code LockedOnCFP all caps inside the game to receive a free boost or bonus to start your program. 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It's a 14-day free trial and then just $5 a month afterwards and it's a great way to get the inside or scoop on everything BYU sports that I am hearing on a daily basis. Alright, let's talk about BYU recruiting for just a moment here before we wrap up today's show. In the aftermath of BYU's win on Saturday and I saw these offers go out. They're announced by the individual athletes about their offers. The first one, both of them by the way, come from Maple Mountain High School down in Maple to Utah so a stone throw away from BYU but you work from home and obviously expand out from there if you're BYU and they have offered two defensive end-type pass rush types from Maple Mountain. It's Oohila, my techie-tanga-fina-fuyaki-wolf-gram. Yeah, that's a name right there everybody. Oohila is a 6'3", 215 pound defensive end for Maple Mountain. His stats early on the season are actually pretty solid, I haven't seen it on Max Prebs. I see him with, I think, is it three sacks on the season already? Three and a half sacks for three games. Four Maple Mountain, five solo tackles, 13 overall on the season but more importantly, he's also averaging, let's see, he's got five tackles for loss on the season as well so very disruptive player but he's a young player. 2027 class is a very young athlete at this point but 6'3", 215 that's a very, very good size for his age and his teammate, Jag Iowani, and that's an easier name to say than Oohila, his name, Jag Iowani got an offer from BYU Saturday night as well. He's listed at 6'2", 165 pounds, lists himself as a defensive end, a quarterback and a wider receiver from Maple Mountain High School. His statistics so far this year show him as a defensive player as well. He has got a grand total of one and a half sacks so three games this year, six total tackles but the thing about this is if you look at these two players, they project as high level pass rush types to BYU absolutely needs to have their defense thrive at the highest level. Watch what happens Saturday night, BYU started generating pressure and that made things absolutely unlock for BYU's defense. All of a sudden the secondary feels a lot more confident about themselves in the pass rush, is it harassing, DJ Williams, the Southern Illinois quarterback when he's having to scramble all the time. Yeah he carved up with his legs but here's the thing, he was literally the only weapon with his feet that Southern Illinois had, BYU made them as bad as one dimensional as you can make them in that game and the other part about this is you can scheme better to contain QB run going forward so it was a very, very solid defensive outing for BYU and the nice part is I think these two young men speaking of Jaguar, Iowani and then Oohila Wolfgram can look at this and say you know what I can see myself fitting in this defense. Now BYU's the second offer to both of these young men, the University of Utah offered them earlier on in the week but I think this is BYU realizing, we need to capitalize on some of the success we're having right now. BYU, the only way they're going to continue to increase in terms of their overall talent base is to get in early with these young men and they've done a fairly good job over the years of being one of the first if not the first through the door to offer young men these scholarships and in this case they were second because Utah beat them just by a few days but continue to make them feel the love and continue to sell them on the vision you have for this program. Show them what BYU's doing defensively. Look at that tape against Southern Illinois and point to them and say hey you can be Isaiah Banyan this defense or you can be a guy like I from Asiata, you can do exactly what those guys are doing and that's going to make them think okay you know what I got a legitimate chance here to be an impact player for BYU and obviously they can put on for their hometown because Mabelton's two cities over from Provo and that's the nice part about this is BYU has it all in their hands right now when it comes to recruiting so congratulations to both JAG as well as Uhela on those offers and we'll see how things progress in the coming days and months obviously because they have plenty of time, the 2027 recruiting cycle. Just for example right now in the 2025 class we're talking about guys who are freshmen and sophomores right now getting offers from BYU. There's plenty of time for them to develop kind of grow into their frames and also continue to hone their skills but BYU see something in both of these young men and they want to get into it get in on the sweepstakes very early on here. Two other quick notes before we go on today's show is a tough loss for BYU women's soccer after a loss against UCLA at midweek last week they lost the number 19 Utah State 2-1 on Southfield so the BYU women's soccer program on a two match losing streak now crazily enough. The cougars were ranked 16th in that game against Utah State we'll see where they end up in the rankings after those two losses it wouldn't surprise me if they fall out of those rankings but we'll see how that plays out today when those new polls come out and then also the 16th ranked BYU women's volleyball team opened their weekend with three big wins in the cougar it was a cougar classic I think it's where they had this weekend but a big showing for them on the hardwoods over there at the Smithfield houses they got their season off to a positive star but congratulations to the women's volleyball program on their wins over the weekend so there you go that's what I got for you guys on this Monday edition of the podcast a big thank you as always for your continued support we'll react to whatever Klani Satake and players have to say on tomorrow's show and also we'll get in you ready we'll look at SMU what to expect from the Mustangs what can we learn from history against the Mustangs we'll delve into all that as we continue all week long getting ready for that game against SMU down there in Highland Park Texas it's Dallas but you know they're in quote-unquote Highland Park one of the metro areas in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex alright that's it big thank you to all of you for tuning in thank you for making locked on cougars your first listen to the day and obviously a big thank you to all of you who are every day is with us right here on the locked on cougars podcast a prime members you can listen to this locked on podcast add free on Amazon music download the Amazon music app today [MUSIC PLAYING]