By SCOTT BELL
bell@du2.byu.edu
LAS VEGAS -- The injustice of it all is what hurts the most.
The BYU Cougars know they lost to Air Force in the WAC Championship Game 20-13 on Saturday. They understand what happened.
They also know it shouldn't have happened, and that is what will stick with them and fans for days to come.
'You want to take back two plays, but two plays are a game,' defensive tackle Daren Yancey said. 'You can't take back plays. I was sitting in the locker room after the game and it didn't seem real. I was wishing I could snap my fingers, go back out there and say, 'Oh, that was a terrible nightmare.''
The two plays that put Yancey and the Cougars in a daze came late in a game statistically dominated by the Cougars.
First Blane Morgan hit Matt Farmer on a slip screen that turned into a 59-yard touchdown to put the Falcons ahead 14-13 with 3:49 left. Then Spanky Gilliam rumbled 29 yards to put Air Force up 20-13 with 1:43 remaining.
'It shocked everybody,' said linebacker Derik Stevenson. 'We felt like we were dominating on defense and getting a lot of yards on offense, and all of a sudden, we're down.'
The numbers on the stat sheet paint a vastly different portrait than those on the scoreboard. BYU rolled up 390 total yards compared to the Falcons' 260. The Cougars had 29 first downs while the Falcons got 11.
That's what made the loss all the more tough to take. That's what sent Brad Martin into a post-game locker room tirade. That's why a disconsolate Stevenson, who played the game of his career, sat in the interview room hunched over with his head in his hands.
'We did the same thing against Utah and got lucky and won,' Martin said. 'We were dominating, then a few plays and they're right back in it, and they won the game.'
The Cougars were foiled by the oldest, most painful lesson of football: No matter the statistics, blown opportunities translate into losses.
'I got a pretty good idea of how (former Wyoming coach) Joe Tiller felt a couple of years ago here,' coach LaVell Edwards said. 'I was thinking all along our inability to score in scoring territory was going to come back to haunt us and it did. We pretty much dominated the game, but our inability to score was the thing that ultimately killed us.'
BYU ventured into the red zone -- inside Air Force's 20-yard line -- seven times and came away with a touchdown and two field goals. Twice field goal attempts failed, once the Cougars turned it over on downs and once they were forced to punt.
'It's real tough,' quarterback Kevin Feterik said. 'It's one thing to get man-handled, but we were doing the man-handling (Saturday). It's frustrating to be dominating like that and come out on the short end of the stick.'
The loss was typical of BYU's struggles this season. While the best defense in school history shut opponents down, the offense couldn't always hold up its end. Several times the defense alone was enough to win games, but against Washington, Fresno State and Air Force it wasn't.
'I don't know how many times we got in the red zone,' Stevenson said. 'Every time the defense would look at each other and expect to get a touchdown or a field goal at least. But it just wasn't happening.'
Against the Falcons, a win wasn't happening either.