Cougars hold second team scrimmage of 2015 fall camp

PROVO, Utah -- The BYU Cougars held their second scrimmage of fall camp Saturday at LaVell Edwards Stadium. The closed scrimmage was played in front of special guests as a part of a reunion for the team’s Thursday’s Heroes. 

"Nice to see a couple big plays today," BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall said. "There was a short yardage run that went the distance – that was something that didn’t happen in the first scrimmage, so we added a touch of big play potential in today’s scrimmage."

Running back Adam Hine led the Cougar offense on the ground, taking the first handoff of the scrimmage up the middle for a 53-yard touchdown. Hine finished with 72 yards on five carries and two touchdowns while senior Nate Carter added 32 yards on three carries. 

At the quarterback position, Taysom Hill had a strong performance going 13 of 18 for a total of 143 yards. Freshmen backups Beau Hoge, Tanner Mangum and Koy Detmer Jr. also saw significant playing time. Hoge completed all five of his passes for a total of 56 yards. Detmer finished with four completions off eight attempts for 60 yards while Mangum completed four passes for 36 yards in 10 attempts and an interception. 

Among the receivers, Trey Dye had a team-high six receptions for a total of 62 yards and David Kessler finished with five catches for 75 yards.

The defensive pass rush had a strong performance and recorded a team total of eight sacks on the day. Sione Takitaki had an interception followed by a 20-yard return and Zach Newman recovered the scrimmage's only fumble. Linebacker Fred Warner led the team with four tackles.

The Cougars have two weeks left to prepare for their season opener against the Nebraska on Sept. 5 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. 

Quotes from Bronco Mendenhall:

I liked our field goal kicking a lot. Our kickers looked good: Trevor Sampson, especially, was putting the ball through the uprights, which is scoring potential, which is good so I liked what I saw from that standpoint

I thought defensively there was quite a bit of consistency. It still looked like it was difficult to score on them. So defense was fairly consistent throughout the day.

I thought throwing and catching: our offense looked better throwing and catching in general, especially on early downs.

Things to work on: number of penalties – especially upfront – on either side, offensive line or defensive line from either offensive line or procedures. And then I would just say our special teams focus wasn’t as clean as what I had hoped, I thought we would have been a little further ahead that way.

On Taysom:

Who knows what’s going to happen when we actually let him run and try to tackle him. That’s a whole other element, but I think history shows that’s strong, but throwing and catching wise I actually liked it. There’s a lot of unique challenges he’s going to pose to defenses, but one of the strengths today of the scrimmage, at least from my perspective, was throwing and catching the ball and Taysom in particular.

On Nick Kurtz:

It’s really nice: collectively we refer to nick and Mitch as the twin towers. It’s hard to get matchups for 6’6” and 6’5” players that run pretty well.

On Francis Bernard:

Tough physical, reliable, consistent, all those things. He’s been one of my real pleasant surprises of this fall camp and he’s farther along and more productive at a higher level than any of us expected. He’ll play. He’s done a nice job.