BYU defeated West Point 71-10 Thursday night in Provo, Utah.

As has been the case whenever the Cougars play a well-regarded team, the game was close for a while, but BYU pulled away, essentially by playing the way they play with full intensity all the way through the game. BYU opened up the scoring after a little bit of scrappy play. Army thumped the BYU runners back, but then former HS All American Zach Webber cut through the line and beat the last defender to score a brilliant try. Army countered with a long series of phases that almost resulted in a try, except that what might have been the final pass was intercepted by prop Zane Mendenhall, who then took off and almost set up a try Wing Josh Anderson was unable to hang onto the pass.

Despite BYU deciding not to contest rucks at all, but spread out the defense, Army did manage to push the Cougars back, and eventually scrumhalf Jake Banarhall scampered and wriggled his way over the line to make it 7-5. The score remained 7-5 after 20 minutes, but then Joseph Nicholls kicked ahead and center Calvin Whiting chased it down and scored in the corner. Whiting was good on the touchline conversion, too - his goalkicking has been excellent this season - and it was 14-5.

Right after the restart, the Cougars pressured again and eventually thumped it over with hooker Alex Vorster. That made it 19-5. Army continued to attack, but the punishing hits from BYU started to take its toll. Meanwhile, the Cougars just were too quick, and too deadly. A break from loose forward Latanoa Pikula set up Mednehall to sell a dummy and race in like a back. Army held off BYU after that, and pounded the forwards up the middle. Their phase play was very good, and flanker Andrew Irwin made an excellent run, and then finished the work to get over the line to make it 26-10, and that's how the half ended.

In the second half, BYU started strong, as they love to do, and finished strong. 

"We've been able to play well this season thanks to coaches Smyth and Tarawhiti," said BYU rugby team captain and scrumhalf Luke Mocke. "Our conditioning and drills have made the difference in each of our matches. It's shown by our scoring ability and defense."