As great a coach as LaVell Edwards was at BYU, his stadium has been a bust.

It's not his fault, of course, but since Edwards retired in 2000, BYU has posted a 17-13 record in the stadium bearing his name. The Cougars are just 11-13 in the past 24 games there.

Those numbers hardly strike fear in the hearts of opponents.

For BYU to return to its glory years, that has to change. And it has to begin today when the Cougars take on a very good Tulsa football team (2 p.m. MT, The mtn.).

"We've got to get that back," BYU junior linebacker Bryan Kehl said. "We've got to defend our home field."

When BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall scheduled this game, he had just been named head coach and Tulsa was coming off a 4-8 season. Now the Golden Hurricane, which won nine games in 2005, come into LES as the defending Conference USA champions.

"Nine wins and a conference championship team coming in, it gives us no reason to expect it to be easy and we expect it to go right down to the end again," Mendenhall said. "Having a game like we did in the opener and drawing from a few last year, if I can use that effectively, I should be able to prepare our team at a higher level."

Steve Kragthorpe, the son of former BYU offensive line coach Dave Kragthorpe, has done a masterful job in turning around a truly awful Tulsa program. Before he took over in 2002, the Golden Hurricane were just 2-21 in the previous two seasons. He's 22-17 since then and has created a team with a dangerous offense and a strong defense. And because of his previous experience with BYU, Kragthorpe knows exactly the atmosphere his team will face today.

"I know the history and tradition of that program," Kragthorpe said. "I've seen a lot of games at what is now LaVell Edwards Stadium. They're very efficient in the way that they approach the game. Bronco is a great coach. I've had the chance to coach with Bronco at two different spots, first as a graduate assistant at Oregon State and a full-time coach at Northern Arizona. He played for my dad at Oregon State, so I've known Bronco for almost 20 years now.

"They've been in a lot of very big games before. I thought they really played well on defense against Arizona. They had a couple of scoring opportunities that they weren't able to put points on the board in the Arizona game."

Putting points on the board hasn't been a problem for Tulsa, which averaged 33 points per game in 2005 and blasted Division II Stephen F. Austin 45-7 last week. Junior quarterback Paul Smith, who holds the Oklahoma prep record for passing yards, is a multi-dimension quarterback who can hurt teams with his arm and his legs.

"His greatest strength is his ability to create," Mendenhall said of Smith. "He is definitely not afraid to run the ball. They get him out of the pocket frequently on boot and he is very mobile. His ability to create is why they are so effective on third down (49 percent in 2005)."

The offense is coordinated by Charlie Stubbs, who was the offensive coordinator at Oregon State when Mendenhall played there. Stubbs also spent two seasons as a graduate assistant at BYU.

Tulsa's defense is experienced, and for the second straight week, the Cougars will face a team with outstanding defensive backs. Safety Bobby Blackshire and cornerback Nick Graham are considered two of the best at their positions in C-USA. Middle linebacker Nick Bunting is an All-American candidate in Tulsa's 3-3-5 defense. Mendenhall said Tulsa doesn't blitz as often as BYU did when it ran the same look for the past three seasons.

While BYU's defense performed admirably in last week's 16-13 loss to Arizona, the offense failed to produce as expected with only one touchdown and two field goals in four trips inside the Arizona 10-yard line.

"The entire focus this week has been on execution," Mendenhall said. "The best offenses I have had a chance to defend, including the one this week, is simply the question of can you stop it because they will execute it at a higher level than you can defend it.

"I remember the times when Norm Chow was the coordinator here and Coach Edwards was the coach and I was a coordinator at New Mexico. It wasn't that we didn't know what play was coming. It was simply the execution was at a higher level than we could present on our side of the ball."

Getting There: Mendenhall graded his special teams, a problem area last year, as "improved" in the Arizona game.

"I thought they played harder and executed at a higher level than any other point of last season," Mendenhall said. "Our punt returns was the best I've seen it here as my time as a coach. Our coverage on punt was good and especially good at pinning it inside the five-yard line and 10-yard line a number of times. Kickoff was solid a number of times but not great, and our kickoff return can still be improved, even though their kicker had a strong leg and kicked it into the end zone a number of times."

Old Joke: "I wonder where my dad went wrong," Kragthorpe said. "He raised a coach and a sportswriter (Salt Lake Tribune columnist Kurt Kragthorpe) and LaVell raised an author, a doctor and a lawyer."

Remember When: Kragthorpe said he came to Provo about a year-and-a-half ago, when his father was receiving a distinguished alumni award from Utah State. He drove to Provo to see BYU offensive line coach Jeff Grimes, who was a graduate assistant at Texas A&M when Kragthorpe coached there.

"I wanted to see BYU's new facilities," Kragthorpe said. "They'd just built a new football complex and a new indoor complex. There was a lot of nostalgia there. Here's where I went to grade school, here's where we lived, here's the lawn I had to mow in relation to the small little lawn that you have to mow now. Those kind of things."

Extra Points: Mendenhall said if senior Curtis Brown gets more touches on offense today, freshman Mike Hague would get an opportunity to return kicks. ... If senior guard Jake Kuresa (knee) is unable to go, sophomore Travis Bright will start in his place. ... BYU will be handing out "Touchdown Towels" to the south end zone fans. Other towels can be purchased for a $1 at the stadium. ... 14 different receivers caught passes for Tulsa against Stephen F. Austin.

Daily Herald Sports Editor Darnell Dickson can be reached at 344-2555 or by e-mail at ddickson@heraldextra.com. Read his blog at heraldextra.com/blogs.

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This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C1.