Boulder, Colo. • BYU offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick felt good about his quarterback coming back from halftime deficits.
Just last week, freshman quarterback Bear Bachmeier manufactured 21 points after the intermission to beat East Carolina.
“He was throwing to the right guy [in the first half], doing the right thing,” Roderick said. “I had a lot of confidence in him to regroup and score points in the second half.”
Asked to do it a second straight week, Bachmeier delivered again in Boulder.
BYU’s offense, which struggled to put up 10 points in the first half, scored two touchdowns in the second half to give the Cougars a 24-21 win over the Colorado Buffaloes.
The first score came on a fourth-and-2 inside the red zone, with Bachmeier delivering a strike to a wide-open Chase Roberts in the end zone.
BYU answered another Colorado touchdown with a 75-yard drive that was capped off with a Cody Hagen 32-yard touchdown.
Bachmeier carried the heavy load, accounting for more than 250 yards and a quarterback rating of 149. Bachmeier finished 19-of-27 for 179 passing yards and two touchdowns. He also ran for 103 yards on 14 carries. He was over 70 percent of BYU’s offense.
On defense, BYU settled in after a shaky start. Colorado rolled up 188 yards in the first half and scored twice in the first quarter. It was the first time this season that coordinator Jay Hill’s defense had allowed a touchdown.
But after the first quarter, the unit settled in. The Buffs averaged less than 3.5 yards per carry in the second half and only managed one touchdown drive.
Colorado briefly took the lead after quarterback Kaidon Salter found Dre’lon Miller on a 19-yard touchdown behind BYU’s defense. But an Isaiah Glasker sack and forced three-and-out snuffed out the rest of Colorado’s scoring opportunities.
Glasker later iced the game, intercepting Salter with under a minute to play.
BYU is 4-0 and will return home to play West Virginia next week.