No. 8 BYU didn’t just beat Iowa State on Friday night. The Cougars landed three jolts that changed the feel of the game, pushed it out of reach and helped produce a 24-10 win in Provo.
A penalty early set the temperature. A violent downfield collision cracked the second quarter open. And then a deep shot in the third quarter put the whole thing on ice.
BYU improved to 5-0 and has now won 28 of its last 32 games. The final score looked comfortable, but the action underneath it was anything but sleepy.
The first swing came when Iowa State running back Aiden Flora, fresh off a national spotlight week after piling up 260 yards of total offense and five touchdowns in a 45-42 win over West Virginia, ran into a BYU defense that clearly had him circled.
On Flora’s second carry, which went for no gain, Tausili Akana finished the play by picking him up and driving him into the ground. The hit drew a deserved 15-yard penalty, but it also sent a clear message. Flora, the former walk-on who had just become college football’s national player of the week, was not dealing with the same kind of space or same kind of resistance he saw a week earlier.
BYU bottled him up from there. Flora managed only 11 yards on eight carries in the first half and finished with 86 yards, most of them coming late. More importantly for the Cougars, the touchdowns disappeared too.
“They’re really good up front,” said Iowa State coach Jimmy Rogers. “They move the front a bunch, creating communication issues with how they stem and move and then the noise of it all here, not being able to sustain blocks. We couldn’t get anything going.”
The next turning point was a far more theatrical kind of contact.
After BYU had stumbled through a pair of turnover-on-downs and carried a shaky 7-3 lead late in the second quarter, Bear Bachmeier got the Cougars moving again. On second-and-7 from the Iowa State 32, he rolled left and saw tight end Roger Saleapaga II free in the secondary with three Cyclone defenders closing.
Saleapaga’s route had already done the damage. Seconds after the snap, he raced downfield and ran into Iowa State safety Eddie Lemos, a 5-foot-10, 187-pound defender. The result was a blowout in miniature: Lemos went down, Saleapaga kept going, and the junior tight end turned it into the longest catch of his career, a 63-yard gain to the Iowa State 5.
Two plays later, BYU had a 14-3 halftime lead.
“It was good to see the tight ends get involved a little more but also to have the offense clicking as a unit,” said Walker Lyons, Saleapaga’s tag-team partner at tight end. Together, the two combined for 133 yards on seven receptions. “It was good.”
Then came the knockout punch.
With 1:18 left in the third quarter and BYU ahead 14-3, Bachmeier took the shotgun snap at the BYU 25 and let the fastest man on the field do the rest. Legend Glasker, even with double coverage waiting for him, ran right past the Cyclones and Bachmeier dropped the ball in for a 75-yard touchdown.
It was Glasker’s third long scoring strike of the season, after a 61-yarder against Arizona and a 70-yarder against Colorado State. The freshman finished with five catches for 99 yards.
“It’s awesome. He’s fast,” said Bachmeier, who bounced back from last week’s rain-soaked 62-yard passing day at TCU by throwing for 329 yards against Iowa State. “We have a lot of guys that can go on the perimeter, and when you mix in our tight ends, we’re just dynamic - and I think that’s hard for defenses to scheme against that.”
There were a few extra scenes around the main event, too.
Before kickoff, Jamaal Williams, BYU’s all-time leading rusher, was on the field talking up freshman runner Journee Tonga as the Cougars adjusted to life without senior star LJ Martin. Former star Derwin Gray, who had 13 interceptions during his BYU career, fired up the defensive backs.
And just before the Cougars headed to the locker room, the entire team turned and waved toward President Dallin H. Oaks, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and former BYU president, who was watching from the press box.
During BYUtv’s pregame show, James The Mormon, whose real name is James Curran, performed his song “Tellin You Y.” BYU recently purchased the rights to the song for use at its athletic events.
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Walker Lyons and Roger Saleapaga II also became important pieces in the passing game, giving BYU a different kind of balance when it needed it most. For a team trying to sort out its identity heading into a marquee matchup, the bigger question now is whether this kind of all-around production can hold up when the competition level rises again. [Read more 🡒]
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This is the part of the calendar when every result seems to carry extra weight, especially for a BYU team watching the wider race while trying to protect its own spot in the mix. The preview of the weekend slate points to injury questions, high-profile matchups and shifting expectations across the SEC, Big Ten and beyond, but for BYU the focus is narrower now: one massive challenge looms, and everything about the playoff path suddenly runs through it. [Read more 🡒]