PROVO — BYU may not have looked like a top-10 team Saturday at LaVell Edwards Stadium, but at least the No. 9 Cougars made things interesting.

And so did New Mexico.

After trailing at home for the first time this season, albeit by just 3-0, BYU scored 21 unanswered points over the final three quarters and held off the gritty Lobos, 21-3.

While many fans and pundits expected BYU to cruise to a blowout victory, it was pretty much what coach Bronco Mendenhall said it would be — a physical, tough, Mountain West Conference battle.

Late in the fourth quarter, the Cougars led 14-3 before a game-clinching drive — capped by an eight-yard touchdown pass from Max Hall to Austin Collie — sealed the deal with 3:05 remaining.

"It's a great win for our football team in the way that it came — hard-fought, inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot," Mendenhall said afterward. "I don't expect any of the games from this point on to be easy. It's a great transition, a bridge, from the first five games to what's to come."

The Cougars know an even tougher battle is looming Thursday night when they travel to TCU.

"This is conference play. Teams are going to do everything they can to disrupt what we're doing," said Hall, who completed 22 of 34 passes for 265 yards and three touchdowns. "New Mexico is a good football team. They have a good defense. They did a great job against us. Teams are going to figure out ways to confuse us and put pressure on us. A 21-3 win is big-time in a conference game."

Certainly, it was much more difficult than home wins in September over UCLA and Wyoming.

"I think UCLA spoiled us a little bit," Hall said. "We're not going to win every game 59-0. The rest of these games are going to be dogfights. I'll take 21-3 every time."

New Mexico coach Rocky Long, for one, expected a tight game. In fact, he expected it to be much closer than 21-3.

"BYU is a great football team and they deserve their ranking, but this should have been close to the end," Long said. "We came here to win, not to keep it close."

The final score may not help the Cougars when the polls are released today, but defensive lineman Jan Jorgensen doesn't care about that. "If we start worrying about the polls, we're going to get sidetracked and we won't focus on what we need to focus on and we'll lose," he said.

Saturday's game was a chess match, with both teams playing conservatively for much of the contest. The Lobos relied on the ground game and its bruising running back, Rodney Ferguson, who rushed for 86 yards on 24 carries. New Mexico's offense had possession for 32:31, compared to 27:29 for BYU — which was a main focus of the Lobos' game plan — to keep the ball away from the Cougar offense.

"The number one objective we have is to control the points. There were times when we were a little bit more patient than we needed to be or that I would have liked to be," Mendenhall said. "But I didn't want to take the chance of giving up a play action or a gadget play or something like that at the risk of not giving our offense the ball enough through time of possession to win the football game. That was the interplay going on. As it worked out, it was, I think, managed appropriately. There will be many who will look at the score and wished it would have been more or less. I wouldn't have changed a thing. It was exactly what we needed to do to win this game, which was our objective."

UNM threw some surprises at BYU's defense, such as utilizing backup quarterback Tate Smith, who completed 5 of 10 passes for 69 yards and an interception.

"We didn't really prepare for that," linebacker David Nixon said of Smith. "He's done some reverse passes this year, so we were looking out for that. But he did a great job throwing the ball and presented a whole new challenge to us. Give credit to them. They played well."

The first quarter finished 0-0, then New Mexico scored first on a 27-yard field goal by James Aho early in the second quarter, which marked the first time BYU had trailed since the Washington game on Sept. 6.

On the ensuing kickoff, Collie caught the ball deep in Cougar territory, near the sideline, and stepped out of bounds. "I didn't want the ball to roll into the end zone," Collie explained. "I thought I was a lot further away (from the sideline) than I really was. That was honestly my fault. I should have let it go because it had the chance to get out of bounds."

Fortunately for BYU, Collie made up for that miscue by hauling in a 58-yard pass from Hall a few plays later. That was key in a 95-yard drive, which ended with a one-yard touchdown strike from Hall to Andrew George, lifting the Cougars to their first lead of the game, 7-3,

with 6:34 left in the second quarter.

BYU added another score in the third on another TD pass to George, an 11-yarder, with 6:08 remaining in the third.

But those pesky Lobos kept putting the pressure on the Cougars.

Finally, BYU marched 76 yards on 11 plays, culminating on the touchdown pass to Collie with three minutes left.

Before that final drive, offensive coordinator Robert Anae gathered his players together. "We have to make this work," he said. "Let's get it going."

The Cougar offense did just that. Hall told his teammates: "We have to score. If we're going to put this game away, we have to score on this drive. Austin had some key catches during that drive. We started playing like we normally do. We just need to be a little more consistent and come out and play like that on every drive.