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There Is Tradition for BYU; It Boils Down to Respect : Holiday: The Cougars, coming off an embarrassing loss to Hawaii, will try to prove themselves against Texas A&M; on Saturday.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Stop us if you have heard this before:

Brigham Young’s football team, with an impressive record and high national ranking, covers enough land throwing the ball to make even the best real estate agents green with envy. The end of the season arrives, and the Cougars make their bowl reservations.

Surprise, it’s the Holiday Bowl, home of the Western Athletic Conference champion. The game approaches. The Cougars prepare for traditional a big-time opponent, such as Ohio State or Michigan or Penn State. But many football fans across the nation yawn. Wake us up when BYU plays a real team, they say.

Meanwhile, BYU players bristle. They talk about getting respect. And the bowl arrives . . .

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Welcome to Holiday Bowl week, 1990. BYU will play Texas A&M; (8-3-1) Saturday.

It will be BYU’s ninth appearance in the 14-year history of the Holiday Bowl. It has come to be expected, like finding your newspaper in the driveway each morning.

The Cougars are 10-2, including a 28-21 victory over No. 1 Miami in Provo Sept. 8. BYU eventually crept as high as fourth in the national rankings and, as recently as 3 1/2 weeks ago, had a chance at the national championship.

Then the Cougars went to Hawaii Dec. 1. Quarterback Ty Detmer received word that afternoon that he had won the Heisman Trophy.

And BYU received a good, old-fashioned whipping that night, 59-28, as four passes by Detmer were intercepted.

The chorus of naysayers started immediately. BYU, a national championship team? Ha!

So BYU, rated 13th, arrives a little red in the face. The Cougars will line up against unranked Texas A&M; and, like most of their bowl games in the past, this one will be about respect.

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Fullback Matt Bellini said, “We’re out to prove to people we’re a top-10 team. We get wound up to play big opponents, because we don’t get respect because of the conference we play in.

“And, we throw the football. We’re not three-yards-and-a-cloud of dust.”

BYU is ranked second nationally in pass efficiency with a rating of 155.5, total offense of 565.8 yards a game and scoring of 42.5 points a game. Detmer is second in pass efficiency with a rating of 155.9 and total offense with 418.5 yards a game. Receiver Andy Boyce finished fourth in catches per game with 6.58 and in reception yardage with 1,241.

The most familiar names are Detmer, who has passed for 5,188 yards this season, and Chris Smith, BYU’s All-American tight end. But don’t forget about Boyce, a senior wide receiver, who caught 79 passes and averaged 15.7 yards per catch and a team-high 103.4 yards per game.

“Andy Boyce has had an outstanding year,” BYU Coach LaVell Edwards said. “Ty and Chris Smith have gotten the attention, but Andy Boyce has been a big plus for us.”

There is something else you should know about this team. Edwards likes more than the offense.

“The way we’ve developed defensively, and the way we’ve developed as a team, period,” he said.

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“When we started last spring, we were a long way away from being a championship-caliber football team. But we stayed healthy. And the defense really played well until that last game against Hawaii.”

BYU is toughest against the run, having limited opponents to an average of 116.3 yards a game. The Cougars’ best defenders are senior end Rich Kaufusi, senior linebacker Alema Fitisemanu and senior back Brian Mitchell. All were first-team all-WAC picks.

But if you ask Edwards what impressed him most this year, he won’t talk of Miami, or of the Washington State game the next week, when the Cougars turned a 29-7 halftime deficit into a 50-36 victory. He won’t tell you about his 13th WAC championship in 19 years of coaching, or about Detmer’s Heisman.

His favorite thing about 1990?

“The kind of kids we have,” he said.

“I’ve had fewer problems among this team than any I’ve had in some time. They all seem to like each other. Nobody has been jealous of Ty. There have been no personality conflicts.”

The biggest disappointment was the loss in Hawaii. The Cougars were 10-1 at the time, having lost only Sept. 29 at Oregon, 32-16, on a day when five of Detmer’s passes were intercepted.

But that was nothing compared to Hawaii, which Edwards said ranked with BYU’s 38-37 loss to Indiana in the 1979 Holiday Bowl as the most disappointing in his career. Maybe it wouldn’t have been quite so bad had the same thing not happened a year earlier, when BYU also was beaten in Hawaii, 56-14.

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“Having had that happen to us the year before . . . I just couldn’t believe it,” Edwards said.

“We had good practices, good intensity. I don’t know whether the Heisman (earlier in the day) had anything to do with it. You can start figuring out all kinds of reasons.”

Said Bellini: “It took me a long time to get over it. I still don’t know what happened. They did the same thing the year before. I don’t know if we don’t match up with them or what.”

So the Cougars come to San Diego in search of respect. It was that way when they won their only national championship in 1984, clinched by a 24-17 Holiday Bowl victory over Michigan, and it remains that way this week.

“I think that has something to do with it,” Bellini said.

“I remember (1988), we lost three of our last four and came into the Freedom Bowl and beat a good Colorado team (20-17). It’s a similar-type situation now.

“Although we have a better team now, I think pride is still involved. Whether we’re ranked sixth or 12th, we’ve got to try to win.

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“I’m sure there are people out there saying they don’t think we’re a good team. I’m looking forward to showing them we can play.”

Holiday Bowl Notes

Kickoff is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Saturday . . . BYU is 4-4 in Holiday Bowls. Texas A&M; is making its first appearance. . . . Brigham Young fullback Matt Bellini is a tentative starter. Bellini suffered torn ligaments in his right ankle at Utah Nov. 17. He missed the next week’s Utah State game and played sparingly against Hawaii. Although he is a fullback, he is used mainly as a receiver--his 204 receptions rank ninth on the NCAA career list and second on the WAC career list.

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