BYU’s double-overtime loss at UCF this past weekend will likely always be remembered for its chaotic finish — especially the somewhat-controversial officiating of the final minutes.
While Kalani Sitake said it “would have been nice” to have received some immediate clarification regarding Saturday’s officiating, he’s leaving the drama behind. He knows there are bigger fish to fry for his squad.
“I’ve moved on, it’s not really going to do much for me to cry about it,” Sitake told reporters Monday in his weekly press briefing.
“It was great competition, congratulations to UCF for getting a win. Honestly, my mind has got to be focused on what we can do against ASU, and you guys have brought it up, (we’ve) got to fix the missed tackles, we’ve got to fix the missed assignments. I got more things to worry about than the refs.”
Yes, for all of BYU’s missed opportunities in Orlando, there were even more missed tackles.
Pro Football Focus charged the Cougars with a season-high 18 missed tackles against UCF, in addition to their lowest regular-season defensive grade (62.3) since 2023.
In all, BYU allowed 463 total yards — including 170 yards rushing — to a Knights offense led by backup quarterback Keyone Jenkins.
“I feel like we were in positions to make plays, and just kind of didn’t finish up on the missed tackles and stuff like that, after watching the film,” defensive tackle Justin Kirkland said.
“You know, this is my fifth year, I’ve been part of some really successful teams and teams that have lost a lot. So I’m kind of treating this one like when you’re getting a drink in the middle of the night and you stub your toe, obviously you didn’t want to stub your toe, but sometimes it just happens.”
The most consequential of all the misses came on a third-and-17 play in the third quarter, as Isaiah Glasker bounced off of a bubble screen to allow a 56-yard gain for the Knights.
Explosive catch & run from Tyren Hornes 🧨
— Big 12 Studios (@big12studios) October 24, 2026
📺 @CFBONFOXpic.twitter.com/6W991txy75
A few moments later, UCF scored a go-ahead touchdown, leaving everyone to wonder what could have been had Glasker and company secured the stop.
“Their skill finds ways to make you miss, so we’ve got to be better tacklers, and be better tacklers who are working on tackling, working on body position, coming to balance, leveraging and spilling the right way, and everybody understands their 1/11th,” Sitake said.
“When everyone’s trying to do more than their job, we get in trouble, and we even cut each other off, and then we find ourselves in duplication, which is not good when everybody has a role,” he continued. UCF did a great job finding and exposing some of the issues ... so we need better technique, we need to reinforce that with our guys and make sure that everybody’s following the standard.
“I mean, that’s not our style of play, and I’m really disappointed that it showed up, but we’ve got to fix it.”
According to safety Raider Damuni, there shouldn’t be a complex solution to get BYU’s tackling back on track, instead just needing to “rep it out” in practice and lock in on tackling drills.
“We don’t plan on going into a game trying to miss tackles,” Damuni said. “We’re going to continue to prepare to make the best plays that we can possibly make on Saturdays. It’s just a lack of execution, and we know what we have to do to be better, and we will.”
Damuni continued, “We’re still in control of our own destiny, you know, we’re confident and we know what we can do. We’ve seen it throughout the season, and we’ve just got to go out and execute. That’s really the main problem on Saturday, is we were in the spots that we need to be, but we just need to finish them. They made one more play than us.
“I don’t think there’s a drop-down in the confidence level that we have in this team, because we know what we’re capable of doing,” he added. “We know the talent that we have, and we’re just going to continue to stay positive throughout the week, learn from our mistakes, but push this game in the past.”
Getting revenge on the Sun Devils
It’s rather fitting that BYU’s UCF loss will be immediately followed by a matchup with Arizona State, considering the last Cougars-Sun Devils showdown in 2024 had a wild ending of its own.
Fans in Tempe rushed the field upon the game’s conclusion, only for officials to put one second back on the clock for a final BYU play. The field was awkwardly cleared, but BYU’s failed Hail Mary attempt quickly triggered another rowdy field storming.
The Cougars, who were kept out of that season’s Big 12 championship game because of the loss, haven’t faced Arizona State since, but the pain from two years ago still remains as a motivating factor for Saturday’s belated rematch in Provo.
“They got the best of us in a heartbreaker,” Damuni said. “That’s still in the back of our minds, and we want to go out and we want to put on our best performance.
“... If we haven’t learned from the past couple of years, anybody in the Big 12 can beat anybody on any given day.”
Kenny Dillingham’s Sun Devils are 4-3 and 2-2 in Big 12 play, having recently defeated Kansas State 28-17, but have yet to earn a conference win on the road in 2026.
“I’ve known Kenny Dillingham for a long time, and have a lot of respect for him and the way he runs things,” Sitake said. “You know, they have a really good team ... they have some momentum, and we’ve got to gain some.”
BYU may be facing a reserve quarterback for the second straight week, as freshman third-stringer Jake Fette is slated to make his first career start should Mikey Keene be sidelined with a leg injury.
Fette was thrust into his first significant action late against Kansas State, leading a pair of touchdown drives to help upset the Wildcats.
“He’s at Arizona State for a reason, he’s at a Power Four school for a reason, and so he’s going to be a good athlete,” Kirkland said of Fette.
“He’s going to be ready to come in and obviously play a great game. I think we’re just going to keep doing what we do as a defense and kind of finish all the plays that we were supposed to make this past Saturday.
“I think they’re going to be ready to come in and give us a good game, and we’re going to be ready to do what we do to them.”
Injury updates
As previously reported by the Deseret News, top BYU cornerback Evan Johnson suffered a late injury against UCF and was carried off the field by trainers amid the Knights’ postgame celebration.
“I don’t think he’s going to play this week,” Sitake said of Johnson. “I don’t know if you guys saw the end of the game, that play (where he was injured), but it was brutal. We hoped for something less severe, and so it ended up not being completely horrible, like an end-of-season thing, but we feel like he can come back, it’s just going to be a matter of how he deals with the injury and how he gets back from it in the recovery.”
Sitake also said offensive lineman Trevin Ostler would be ruled out, and that he would “let him make his announcement” regarding the severity of his injury.
Additionally, fellow lineman Kyle Sfarcioc won’t play on Saturday, per Sitake, and while star running back LJ Martin is “getting really close” to returning to the field, it’s unlikely to be against Arizona State.
