Sure would have felt better if it was a loss against a decent brand like TCU (Sagarin of 70), South Carolina (Sagarin of 59) or Missouri (Sagarin of 76), but I think people overstate this loss. BYU had no business losing, but it wasn't against a terrible team. UAB went 9-4 and their strengths played to BYU's weaknesses, so really wasn't a great matchup. Sometimes you have to look past the brand.
BYU was very beat up by the end of the year. The quality of the BYU team in the first half of the season was much higher than the quality of the team in the 2nd half of the season.