BYU at ECU Postgame Notes

The following notes are from BYU's 33-17 loss to ECU on Saturday at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

ATTENDANCE: 38,835
AMERICAN FLAG BEARER: LB Va’a Niumatalolo
TEAM FLAGS: DB Michael Shelton, RB Kyle Griffitts
ALUMNI FLAG BEARERS: Braden Brown (OL, 2008-12), Terence Brown (OL 05, 08-11), Tyrone Brown (RB, 96-98), Bobby Griffitts (DB, 87, 92-93), Peter Tuipulotu (RB, 87-91)

TEAM NOTES

Series
ECU evened up the series against BYU at 1-1 with today’s result.

First defensive series turnover
For the second time this season, BYU’s defense forced a turnover on the opponent’s first possession (Boise State). The offense cashed in with a touchdown again as well.

300 passing yards
BYU finished with 319 passing yards, the most since 441 against Southern Utah in 2016. It was the first time BYU was over 200 passing yards since that game as well.

Total yards
BYU had 421 yards of total offense, setting a new high for the season.

PLAYER NOTES

Aleva Hifo
Hifo finished the game with a career-best 148 yards on nine receptions. He is the first 100-yard BYU receiver since Mitch Mathews had 158 yards against Utah State in 2015.

Tanner Mangum
Mangum completed 26 of 41 passes for 319 yards. It was the first time a BYU quarterback threw for at least 200 yards since Taysom Hill threw for 320 yards against Southern Utah in 2016. His 26 completions were a season best. It was also his sixth career 300-yard game.

Jonny Linehan
Linehan had five punts for 252 yards including two of 50 yards or more and three dropped inside the 20-yardline. He also had a season-long punt of 59 yards.

CAREER HIGHS and FIRSTS (Notable career highs and firsts from today’s game)

Touchdown: Micah Simon, Matt Bushman
Forced fumble: Zayne Anderson
Fumble recovery: Adam Pulsipher

BYU Head Coach Kalani Sitake
“First off, give a lot of credit to East Carolina. Coach Scottie Montgomery did a great job getting his guys ready and did a better job getting his team ready. Unfortunately, we lost the game. We had some good moments and we had some positive yards but the scoreboard doesn’t indicate a lot of the positive things we saw. Now we have to rally back and find a way to keep playing and keep competing and work for the seniors for the rest of the season.”

On the team’s stagnant offense:
“That is the million dollar question right now and it is my job to figure it out. It looked like we had a little bit of a roll towards the end there in the passing game. Between myself and the coaches, it’s on us. The players are giving us solid effort and it has been like that all year. This one is on us coaches and we need to find a way keep working and find consistency.”

ECU Head Coach Scottie Montgomery

“Overall, great team victory. I thought offense, defense and special teams all made adjustments at half time. A lot of critical adjustments. I thought our staff did a great job. Defensively, just critical stops and some guys making stops on the ball which we really haven’t been able to do. I think our overall team speed helped us tonight. We need to increase that overall team speed so we can stay at that level.”

On coming out scoring to start the second half:
“I challenged them and I guess you ask and you may receive. I said what we need to do is get points, get a stop and get points again and we will have command of the game and that’s exactly what happened. Not only did we do that but we got another stop and more points with an interception and a touchdown. It’s hard to lose those type of games.”

On Minshew’s play when Sirk went out:
“We have been practicing them about 60/40 which is pretty normal but he had great command of the offense. As long as we can protect those guys moving forward, our completions are greater, our offense is going to continue to pick up yards and score points. Too many field goals down there. I think we could have had a touchdown on one of those but Thomas didn’t want to come out of the game. We didn’t know anything was wrong with him so we were calling plays for him. But he was whipping them off and the reason why is that he had an elbow bruise that wouldn’t allow him to throw it. So we got into a call that we didn’t necessarily like but thank goodness we got Gardner in there and he kept rolling.”