SAN DIEGO YEAR IN REVIEW : THE TOP 10 SPORTS STORIES : 3 : SDSU 52, BYU 52

It figured to be a memorable game. The Western Athletic Conference championship was on the line; it attracted the largest home crowd in San Diego State football history (56,737); it was televised on ESPN.

Memorable? Certainly, but you won’t find framed pictures of this debacle in the SDSU coaches’ offices next year. In the highest-scoring tie in NCAA history, SDSU played Brigham Young to a 52-52 draw.

It also might have set a record for being the only tie in history in which one team was so happy and one team was so miserable. BYU players whooped it up; SDSU quarterback David Lowery cried on the bench.

It was a Never-Never Land kind of game. SDSU receivers blew by the BYU secondary for much of the night like it was some kind of cartoon. The Aztecs scored on pass plays of 75, 80 and 79 yards. They built a 45-17 lead.

Then they wilted. BYU outscored SDSU in the second half, 35-17, and in the fourth quarter, 21-7. BYU quarterback Ty Detmer set a school record with 599 yards passing.

Of course, Lowery, too, set a school passing record--568 yards--but all people remember was how SDSU blew the game.