4. The penalties. Oh, the penalties.
Yeah, San Diego State had a whole slew of other problems to worry about against Utah State in the Mountain West Championship, but the nine penalties for 130 yards didn’t help. That came after getting flagged eight times against Boise State. So you’d think keeping the mistakes to a minimum would’ve been a major focus going into this.
14 penalties for 124 yards.
On the flip side, UTSA didn’t have a problem with flags during the season – it was No. 1 in Conference USA in fewest penalties for the fewest yards.
Nine penalties for 80 yards.
The mistakes didn’t take away from the game too much, but as the game went on there were too many moments when the teams should’ve held back and should’ve been sharper. They knew the game was getting called a tad tight, but there weren’t a whole lot of cheap flags thrown.