BYU wraps Year 6 by beating a rival in the rain. So, how’s independence going?

On Dec. 21, 2015, San Diego had a high of 57 degrees with no precipitation and almost no wind.

On that day in 2014, the high was 62, again with no precipitation or wind. 2013: 56, no rain, no wind. 2012: 51, no rain, no wind.

So, you’d figure that this poor soul was pretty excited when he got the assignment to cover Wednesday night’s Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego. He didn’t expect to have to explain how gloves weren’t doing their job in terribly rainy conditions.

It’s all about expectations. If you play football in Wyoming, you’re probably pretty used to iffy conditions. But apparently, the Cowboys weren’t mentally prepared for it in San Diego, of all places.

A muffed punt snap set up an early BYU touchdown ...

... and UW cost itself a chance at three points with a bungled field goal snap later in the second quarter. It goes without saying that these two plays backfired horribly in what ended up a 24-21 BYU win. BYU lost a fumble in the Wyoming red zone, as well, but the net effect of the weather benefited the Cougars.

It wasn’t just the mistakes, of course. BYU averaged 6.2 yards per play to Wyoming’s 4.7, tilted the field in its favor (average field position: BYU 33, UW 26), and methodically built a 17-point lead before a late Cowboy charge.

One of the most interesting matchups was going to be when Wyoming attempted to run. The Cowboys were 37th in Rushing S&P+ to date, pairing decent efficiency with big-play ability from junior back Brian Hill. BYU’s run defense entered at a stout 14th in Rushing S&P+. The Cougars have lacked in pass defense (82nd in Passing S&P+), but rendering the Cowboys one-dimensional looked like it might be enough to seal a BYU win.

The verdict: Hill and Shaun Wick rushed 39 times for just 148 yards, 3.8 per carry. That’s a lot of second-and-longs. The Cowboys converted 8-of-18 third-down attempts, and quarterback Josh Allen hit Tanner Gentry seven times for 113 yards, but Wyoming began with six punt attempts and a failed field-goal attempt. They scored touchdowns on three of their final five possessions, but they had spotted BYU leads of 10-0 and 24-7 before they got rolling.

BYU had no such issues running the ball. Passing was problematic — Tanner Mangum was 8-of-15 with a misguided interception, and his lone touchdown pass was, shall we say, accidental — but the Cougars didn’t have to pass much. Jamaal Williams was going off.

Williams finished his career by rushing 26 times for 210 yards; the effort brought him to 1,375 for the season and 3,898 for his career. He rushed five times for 26 yards to set up a field goal, and his 36-yard score gave BYU its biggest lead.

Craig Bohl’s Cowboys finished with two frustrating losses, first to San Diego State in the MWC title game, then to old rival BYU.

Still, they went 8-6 after going 6-18 in 2014-15. They scored 500 points in a season for the first time since 1988. They produced their best S&P+ rating since 2007, when an unlucky Joe Glenn squad finished 5-7. They played in a bowl for the first time since 2011 and in a conference title game for the first time since losing to BYU in the inaugural WAC Championship in 1996.

Bohl’s third season in Laramie was an unmitigated success. You just don’t always get the ending you want.

BYU had stagnated under Bronco Mendenhall. There are worse things than winning eight to nine games each year, but when Mendenhall left for Virginia, it put new head coach Sitake in an awkward position. The first-time head coach, with a first-time college offensive coordinator (Ty Detmer), took over a restless program and had to learn on the job.

He did fine. Good, even. BYU went 9-4 — it was the Cougars’ fifth straight year of finishing either 8-5 or 9-4 after winning 10-plus games five times in six years — and after stumbling to 49th in Def. S&P+ in 2014, they improved defensively for the second straight year. They entered the game 31st in overall S&P+ and might finish in the top 30 for the first time since 2013.

The top three tacklers, and nine of the top 14, are scheduled to return in 2017. While there will be a skill position reset on offense, the line will return mostly intact. Quarterback Taysom Hill has finally run out of eligibility, but Mangum started most of 2015 and will enter 2017 with decent expectations.

It will be interesting to see if Sitake can do anything to break through the ceiling BYU seems to have established for itself. The Cougars have become a stalwart top-40 program but haven’t ranked better than 20th in S&P+ since 2007. The fan base might be happy with Sitake at the moment, but it won’t take long for Sitake to deal with the same restlessness that was dragging Mendenhall down.

In 2011, BYU left Wyoming and the rest of its Mountain West rivals for life as an independent. The move has clearly not been a failure ... but it hasn’t been a rousing success. The Cougars are winning more than they lose, and their schedules are featuring an increasing number of power-conference opponents. But they’re not really getting better or worse.

It feels like BYU has been stuck in transition between its past life and its future life for a while. We’ll see if that changes. But in the meantime, there are worse things than beating a salty rival in a rainstorm.