The Utah Utes needed to win their first game of the 2014 season. For one, they'd lost to Utah State last year, so losing again was clearly out of the question. Utah was coming off a really disappointing season, and losing to Utah State would push the Utes in that direction again.
It didn't seem promising. Utah State got off rolling and didn't really seem to be an easy team to stop. But the Utes eventually held their ground and started pushing Utah State back.
To be sure, Thursday's win over Utah State was not particularly pretty. The defense struggled, and, for periods of the game, so did the offense. There was a period there, early in the third quarter, where it looked like Utah would be run out of their own stadium by the Aggies - a thought that not only indicated things were bad, but potentially worse than last year.
Then they did something last year's team couldn't, they pulled back from the brink and won.
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