BYU is among the nation’s leaders in takeaways, but football coach Kalani Sitake wants more

PROVO — Kalani Sitake generally isn’t a difficult man to please.

BYU’s head football coach is thankful for wins any way they come, always credits opponents for being well-prepared and having a role in his team’s struggles and doesn’t do a lot of nit-picking when the Cougars are rolling, as they are now.

But when it comes to getting takeaways, the former defensive coordinator at Utah and Oregon State who signed a three-year contract extension on Monday can never get enough. 

“You can always improve on that,” Sitake said Monday. “I am never going to be happy with (fewer than two takeaways a game). I think we should have more turnovers every game.”

Case in point: BYU is tied for 12th nationally with 20 takeaways, is tied for third in interceptions with 14 and tied for second in interceptions per game, 1.4. The Cougars are tied for 21st in turnover margin at plus-6, having turned it over just 14 times.

And the coach isn’t satisfied.

“We still need to be more disruptive on defense,” Sitake said.

BYU (6-4) takes a four-game winning streak into Saturday’s contest against 1-10 UMass at 17,000-seat McGuirk Alumni Stadium in Amherst (10 a.m. MST) with an eye toward improvement and maintaining momentum for next week’s showdown at former conference rival San Diego State. The UMass game won’t be available on network television but will be live-streamed by FloSports.tv, a subscription service.

Sitake wants to see the Cougars get some takeaways early to establish their dominance.

He pointed to two plays in the recent 42-10 win over Idaho State that “should have” resulted in takeaways, a drop by linebacker Tyler Allgeier and a sequence when cornerback Dayan Ghanwoloku broke on a pass but was grabbed by ISU’s receiver, resulting in an offensive pass-interference penalty but no turnover.

Ghanwoloku intercepted ISU quarterback Matt Struck later in the game, the seventh pick of his career, and safety Austin Lee had the first pick-six of his career. Sitake wanted more.

“Defensively, let’s create more havoc,” Sitake said. “I thought defensively we could have done more things to create more turnovers and more issues.”

So that’s what the Cougars will work on at UMass, which, for all its weaknesses, does a decent job in producing takeaways as well. The Minutemen are tied for 12th in takeaways with 20 and are 57th in turnover margin (.18), having lost the ball 18 times.

BYU also blocked a punt, sort of, against the Bengals, which special teams coordinator Ed Lamb says is similar to a takeaway. Backup tight end Kyle Griffitts crashed into the shield of players protecting the punter and caused them to step back far enough that the kick hit one of the players in the back.

“Kyle is one of our most tenacious blockers on offense and deadly serious on being the best football player he can be,” Lamb said of the junior from Windermere, Florida.

As has been well-documented, 10 of BYU’s 14 interceptions have come from its linebackers; no other group of linebackers in the country has more. Freshman linebacker Payton Wilgar leads the entire team with three.

Defensive coordinator Ilaisa Tuiaki said the tactic of rushing three defensive linemen and dropping eight into coverage hasn’t produced a lot of sacks — the Cougars are 125th of 130 teams nationally in sacks, with just 10 — but has paid off in other ways.

“We are basically telling the quarterback that you are not going to throw it deep on us,” Tuiaki said. “You are going to have to try to get it underneath, and with the long backers that we have, and how they are schooled up by coach Lamb, they have been really good. They steal balls, and they bait quarterbacks, and I think it is really difficult to complete some of those underneath routes, especially with the small windows that we give them.”

Taking care of the ball will also be a priority against UMass, after the Cougars turned it over twice in the 31-24 win over Liberty and once against Idaho State. Freshman running back Sione Finau fumbled against the Flames and freshman quarterback Baylor Romney threw an interception after a double-reverse flea-flicker. Zach Wilson was intercepted by ISU’s Cody Graves on the last pass he threw before giving way in the fourth quarter to Joe Critchlow.

Wilson said the Cougars “haven’t been bad” at avoiding turnovers through 10 games, but have room for improvement. 

“We have had a couple that really didn’t have a huge impact on the game, and then we have had some that really hurt us,” Wilson said. “It is a focus for us every week. I don’t know the stats, but I know the games we don’t turn the ball over, we have a higher percentage of winning. So that’s always the goal.”

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Cougars on the air

BYU (6-4)

at Massachusetts (1-10)

At Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium, Amherst

Saturday, 10 a.m. MST

Streaming: FloSports.tv

Radio: KSL 1160 AM, 102.7 FM