Don’t fall for the proverbial trap game, they said.

Don’t have an emotional letdown, they said.

Don’t allow the Notre Dame win, and everything that went with it, to detract or distract from the business at hand, they said.

Don’t believe your press clippings, they said.

Don’t get all fatheaded with a high national ranking, they said.

Don’t betray yourselves, they said.

Don’t overlook UCF, they said.

None of what they said included one little detail — that UCF might actually be superior to BYU, if not by record, then in a head-to-head match. The Knights certainly were better by a tight margin on Saturday in Orlando, beating the Cougars in double-overtime, 39-31.

“That was the weirdest end to a game I’ve ever seen,” UCF coach Scott Frost said in the aftermath.

Weirder than weird, covering every bit of the football spectrum, including a tie at the end of regulation in an already chaotic game that featured BYU offering up great plays, dumb plays, egregious mistakes, bad defense, spectacular defense, good offense, horrible offense, an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty against BYU, a blocked kick by BYU, two overtimes, a roughing-the-kicker call against BYU when a linebacker tumbled over a block and rolled into the UCF kicker, transforming three points into six points on a touchdown, plus a successful 2-point conversion, by UCF, and, finally, BYU failing to get what it needed at the end, as an incomplete Bear Bachmeier pass intended for tight end Walker Lyons hit the turf.

It was wicked. It was wild. It was wacky. It was … yeah, weird.

But it made one thing absolutely clear.

BYU is not the No. 2 team in the country. Not even close. Not performing the way it did against the Knights.

That was plain for everyone to see, even those who bleed blue. Those folks were bluer than blue when the weirdness came to a close, with BYU football belly up.

“This is humbling for us, and we’ve got to learn from it,” Kalani Sitake said. “And that’s for all of us.”

He said he was frustrated about the outcome, but gave UCF ample credit: ‘We’ve got some things to think about. And some things to correct. … There’s still a lot of football ahead of us. We’ve got a lot more games to play. We can’t let one loss define us.”

But … what if that loss does define BYU, or displays more than Sitake wanted to let on?

The Cougars traveled nearly 2,000 air miles, everyone presumed, to find out not how good they were, rather to discover the levels of their focus, their consistency, their resolve.

Not only did BYU’s players not hear what they — their coaches, their fans, every human on the planet — said, but they found out the hard way that they’re vulnerable on the road to a team that 1) can stop the run (LJ Martin’s absence certainly didn’t help), 2) can shred their defense with power and speed, and 3) can take advantage of their errors. As it turned out, the coaches goofed up at times, too.

The positive emotion of a week ago, when they beat Notre Dame at home, couldn’t save them on the road on this occasion. The outcome was close, but, truth is, the Cougars were simply outplayed in this game, beyond the missed assignments, the missed tackles, the missed blocks, the missed scoring opportunities.

On this occasion, it would have been a compliment to say, if BYU played up to its competition last week, it played down to it on Saturday. But it’s uncertain that that’s what happened. It looked more like the Cougars could barely keep up with UCF, which came into this game already having suffered three losses, two in the Big 12.

Sitake attributed some of that missing to “lack of technique,” but also to UCF’s “great skill in space … they made us miss.”

More to the point: They made BYU lose.

“We were bested today,” said Sitake. “[We have to] find a way to be better next week.”

If not, then, well …

UCF picked up 26 first downs, BYU just 18. UCF gained 463 total yards, BYU just 373. UCF sustained drives, possessing the ball for nearly 33 minutes, BYU for just over 27.

The Cougar defense yielded significant yardage throughout — via the pass and on the ground. What was notable was that the Knights used speed and muscle to shift around and shove down BYU’s run resistance — gaining 170 rush yards. Sitake’s No. 1 goal with his defense heading into every game is, first and foremost, to stop the run. He knows and has always known that if his guys can’t manage that against any opponent, they’re toast.

That toaster heated up, and when it did, it made UCF’s pass attack that much more effective. Quarterback Keyone Jenkins threw for 293 yards, three TDs, and he ran for another.

There were nice moments for BYU on both sides of the ball — a smooth opening drive, some strong throws by Bachmeier, a couple of other moves down the field by the offense, a sturdy goal-line stand by the defense, but … too many lapses doomed the Cougars.

They played lousy/good enough for a tie when regulation ran out. After their goal-line stand, the count tied at 24, BYU had time left on the clock, tucked up against its own end zone, but coaches chose to play conservatively, running instead of passing, and that resulted in a punt and a chance for UCF to close the thing out at the end of the fourth quarter, but craziness happened, and the Knights couldn’t take advantage.

It didn’t matter — the overtime possessions killed the Cougars. Bachmeier hit Legend Glasker on a crossing route in the first OT for a 28-yard touchdown. But then the defense face-planted when UCF took its turn, Jenkins firing off a 25-yard TD after BYU linebacker Braxton Lindsey whiffed on a sack. UCF scored again on its second possession — first on a field goal, but linebacker Kendal Wall rolled over a blocker into the kicker, resulting in a penalty and a subsequent UCF touchdown. A touchdown BYU couldn’t match on its last attempt.

What conclusions can be drawn from this whole affair?

Some will insist that the Cougars played beneath themselves, ignoring what everybody said, coming in with the wrong mindset, coming in with a victory hangover, lacking the intensity they displayed the week before.

As mentioned, BYU made enough mistakes to last what seemed like an entire season, packed into one outing. But more than a few of those mistakes had reared up in earlier games, as well — games the Cougars had found a way to win. Not this time. And it wasn’t just the mistakes. They were, indeed, out of position on defense on many snaps, but too often, they were too slow, not secure in their tackling, not stout or consistent enough to make the necessary plays.

Weird as this game was over stretches, for all kinds of reasons, it was not a fluke. UCF straight beat BYU and made the Cougars look vulnerable, even inept at times.

It happens these days in college football. Winning is hard. But the remaining teams on BYU’s schedule, if they study the film — and they will — will see challenges, for sure, but opportunities to attack weaknesses, too. And not all of the latter will have to do with fatheadedness or betrayal or travel or distraction or traps or emotion.

It might more accurately have to do with BYU being a good team, but not a great one.