BYU football: Can Sitake deliver a win, end Cougars' rivalry nightmare?

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The long wait is over.

For the first time since Utah celebrated a 20-13 win on BYU's field at LaVell Edwards Stadium in 2013, the Utes and Cougars will meet in a regular-season game tonight at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Both teams are 1-0, the first time they've both entered the rivalry game with undefeated records in more than 80 years. They are playing for the second time in three games, obviously, but the Las Vegas Bowl matchup last December didn't really feel like rivalry week, as I've said before. It's not quite the same when the game isn't played in Salt Lake City or Provo.

All week, I've been asked who is going to win. As followers of this blog are well aware, I don't make predictions, and haven't since halfway through my first season on the BYU beat.

I found making predictions affects my objectivity — everybody wants to be right, right? — and so I scrapped that practice in 2008.

Regarding the outcome of tonight's game, I will say this: Kalani Sitake can earn himself several years of goodwill with BYU fans if he can pull off the upset. The honeymoon will last the entire season, regardless of how the Cougars do against the likes of UCLA, Michigan State and Boise State later on.

I think the key matchup is Taysom Hill and Jamaal Williams against Utah's incredibly stout defense.

I also think that at some point in the game the Cougars will regret not having four key players, would-be returning starters, who were unable to play this season for one reason or another: offensive linemen Kyle Johnson and Brad Wilcox, defensive tackle Travis Tuiloma and defensive end Sione Takitaki.

Tuiloma (the only of the four who could conceivably play, but probably won't) and Takitaki are difference-makers; Johnson and Wilcox are solid veterans accustomed to big games. They will be missed.

Can the Cougars move the ball, and control it, against the Utes like they did against Arizona last week? To do so, they will have to control the line of scrimmage, something they haven't been able to do against the Utes in the five previous matchups, all losses.

After the 20-13 loss, one of my takeaways was how then-offensive coordinator Robert Anae went on and on in his postgame interview about the need to get bigger, stronger and tougher along the offensive and defensive lines.

Sitake said last spring and reiterated in preseason camp that doing that was perhaps the biggest priority in the offseason. We'll find out tonight whether BYU has made improvement in that area.

Of course, avoiding turnovers will also be huge for BYU. That dead horse has been beaten all week.

"Again, I think going into the game, and kinda our game plan against Arizona, was a new staff, both offense and defense, and so we wanted to really dictate what we called offensively and what we called defensively, and a big key to that was time of possession and field position. I think we were able to do that, and were really successful at it. And no turnovers," Hill said.

"So looking to Utah, our mindset is the same. We will take our shots when we need to. We have some stuff prepared for what we expect to see from those guys. We will do our best to make sure it is a clean football game, just like it was against Arizona, knowing that turnovers are a big part of the game."