I saw an interesting statistic on twitter, I didn’t quite believe it so I looked into it.
It said Utah had only one top-25 win in the last three seasons (it appear this is for game-week rankings rather than end of year rankings).
But after a brief bit of research, it appears our only top-25 win in three years was Stanford last year who didn’t finish the season ranked. Can anybody find differently?
The reason I bring this up is the Utes went 1-4 (counting WSU as top 25 team although not ranked when we played) in games against ranked opponents last year (0-2 in 2016 and 0-3 in 2017). Although all those games were very competitive, and on-paper the Utes should be better this year (barring filling a few holes on O-line), the next step in the progression is beating the “good” teams on the schedule rather than just beating the “bad” or “average” teams we’re supposed to beat.
The Utes may only have 1-2 top-25 games this season, to move from a 8-4 or 9-3 team the Utes must win those match-ups in my opinion.
Go Utes!