By Jeff Hanson
Sept. 26, 1994 — It took just about every minute of Saturday’s game to nail down head coach LaVell Edwards’ 200th career victory, but when the dust finally settled at Cougar Stadium, BYU had the 49-47 victory over New Mexico and Edwards had the monkey off his back.
“I have no idea what to say,” Edwards said, as he stood in front of thousands of screaming fans, drenched with the Gatorade his players had dumped on him.
After losing their first shot at making Edwards only the 13th coach to reach the 200 win plateau last week, BYU players took it upon themselves to get their coach his record.
“LaVell Edwards never put too much pressure on us,” quarterback John Walsh said. “We put it all on ourselves.”
The Cougars came out quickly, attacking on the ground as halfback Jamal Willis and fullback Hema Heimuli carried on five of the first seven plays.
Heimuli’s 4-yard run coupled with the point after gave BYU a 7-0 lead.
The rest of the game saw both teams see-sawing back and forth each with their own scoring streaks. After a Lobo touchdown and failed extra point attempt, BYU reeled off 14 unanswered points from a 12-yard TD pass form Walsh to tight end Chad Lewis, and a 19-yarder from Walsh to receiver Kaipo McGuire.
But with nine seconds left in the first half, New Mexico stopped the streak and BYU’s momentum when Lobo receiver Zack Wesley hauled in a 22-yard strike from Case to make the halftime score 21-12.
“(The) touchdown before the half was a downer for us,” Edwards said.
The cougars stayed down at the beginning of the first half, as New Mexico continued their own streak.
David Sloan hauled in another Case TD pass, and two minutes later the Lobos scored again – this time on the 13-yard pass to Abe Ghoston – giving the Lobos their first lead of the game, 27-21.
BYU took over again just before the end of the third quarter, when the Cougars went 73 yards on 10 plays to score on a Willis two-yard run.
BYU continued its streak, scoring twice more as Heimuli hit the end zone on a 7-yard run, and then teamed up with Walsh on a 31-yard pass, giving BYU a 42-27 lead with 10:49 remaining in the game.
Then the roof caved in. Almost.
“I could not believe those guys,” Heimuli said. “They just kept coming.”
The turning point of the game came when the Lobos were caught on their own 31-yard line with a fourth and 13. New Mexico then executed a fake punt, gaining 28 yards when back-up quarterback Jeff Houghtaling stepped in front of the snap and ran.
New Mexico scored on that drive when Eric Young scampered for five yards. A two-point attempt failed, and the Lobos were down 42-33, with 7:20 remaining.
Less than four minutes later, BYU seemed to put the game away when Willis scored his second touchdown of the day on a 39-yard run, giving the Cougars a 16-point lead with just 3:53 remaining.
New Mexico then did what everybody in the stadium feared they would do – in just 36 seconds, Case, who passed for 375 yards and six touchdowns, led his team to another score, capped by a 32-yard pass to Wesley. The Lobos then recovered an onside kick and took another 28 seconds for Case to hook up with Wesley again, this time for a 33 yards. The two-point conversion was good, and with 2:48 left, the score was 49-47.
But the BYU offense held, as Willis carried five times, to wear down the New Mexico defense, and burn the clock out. Willis finished the game with 205 yards on 29 carries and two touchdowns, on a day when rushing yards outnumbered passing yards.
