After watching Utah State dismantle their much hated older brother BYU last night 31-16 ­on national TV, a few thoughts came to my mind.

• Utah State is much, much better than their 2-3 record indicates. With last week’s loss to San Diego State on the road, this Aggies’ squad was able to bounce back to beat BYU at home. This is an Aggie team that gave up over 200 yards rushing to Fresno State two weeks ago, but it was able to contain BYU’s potent offense to just 65 yards rushing. On offense, Borel threw and ran for 260 yards and two scores. BYU was unable to stop Utah State’s dangerous ground gain that took off for 242 yards after holding Colin Kaepernick and the Nevada offense to a season-low 27 points last week.

• So what does this all mean to Fresno State? Well, it’s a good indicator that Fresno State’s traditionally strong run game is better than the yards that it has rushed for. Against Ole Miss last week, the Bulldogs were held to less than 50 yards rushing against what is now a strong Ole Miss defense. The Rebels defense held Kentucky to 124 yards rushing on 30 attempts. The longest run the Rebels gave up was 13 yards to a scrambling Wildcat quarterback. With the Western Athletic Conference schedule coming up next week, expect the ‘Dogs rushing attack to take off like it has in recent years.

• With Fresno State pulling away against Utah State two weeks ago and then getting dominated on the road against Ole Miss, it just makes it that much harder to figure out how good this 2010 team is. With an impressive season-opening win against Cincinnati, it seemed like the 2010 squad was destined to make a splash in the national rankings. Then, came the thumping the team took at Oxford. With a signature win at Oxford, it probably would have propelled the ‘Dogs on brink of being ranked. But the loss just raised more questions and concerns for this Fresno State team. With Cal Poly rolling into town today, we won’t be able to fully analyze how good of a team this squad is until it faces Hawaii at home next week. Until then, its still pretty much like a Week 1 game with a lot of unknowns, especially with the losses of top playmakers A.J. Ellis and Jamel Hamler.

The ‘Dogs are lucky that the schedule worked out to their liking for today’s game. Since many of the Dogs’ top players are out due to injury.