It doesn’t matter how many shots your team gets up in basketball, soccer and hockey, how many runners your team gets on base in baseball and softball, or how many attacks your team gets in volleyball.

The bottom line is how many your team finishes, turning them into points on the scoreboard.

The equivalent in football is that it doesn’t matter how many yards your team gets if it doesn’t get the ball in the end zone

That failure is exactly what doomed BYU in its disappointing 17-13 home loss to Kansas last week.

“We had a lack of execution in the low red zone,” Cougar offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick said after practice on Wednesday. “We actually played really well in the game. We controlled the line of scrimmage. We ran the ball well and threw the ball well, all the way down to the low red zone area. We’ve been very good in that part of the field all season, but in this game we just didn’t finish.”

He said everyone on the offense shares the blame for the failure to get the ball across the goal line.

“I’ve got to do a better job for the team,” Roderick said. “We had various position groups that made mistakes in that area of the field. Jake (Retzlaff) obviously made a very bad throw that he owns up to. But you can’t panic. You’ve got to keep working.”

He said that the margin between a comfortable victory and a loss came down to those miscues.

“If we finish with a couple of touchdowns, we run away with that game,” Roderick said. “But we didn’t. So all the good things we did in the open field don’t count because they’re not points. But I was pleased with the toughness we had and the execution in the open field. We just have to finish in the red zone.”

Perhaps the most frustrating came at the end of the first half when BYU had a first-and-goal at the 5-yard line. Roderick said they went to a play that has been really good for the Cougars but it turned into a disaster.

“I think we’ve scored touchdowns on that play 12 times in the past five years, but the last two times have been interceptions,” Roderick said. “It might be time to go away from that for a while, but it’s been a very good play for us over the years. I think Isaac Rex had five or six touchdowns on that play alone and we threw a couple last year. But the last two games we didn’t execute it well.”

Roderick said that against Kansas, it came down to simply being a bad throw.

“The guys did what they were supposed to do,” Roderick said. “You have a tight end with a huge size advantage on a corner. You just have to throw the ball to the back pylon and then it’s either our guy or nobody. Jake just made a mistake. That’s football and you move on.”

There is reason to believe that if BYU can finish those drives, it can put up a lot of points. The Cougar run game has been a lot better, which has allowed the offense to sustain some long drives.

“If you run the ball really well and play great defense, that’s a recipe to win a lot of games,” BYU senior running back Hinckley Ropati said. “That’s one thing we’ve focused on day in and day out, and I think that is showing.”

The Cougars have been particularly successful in their two-minute drill and while Roderick said the BYU coaches have talked about picking up the tempo more at times, he said there are limitations.

“In the two-minute drill, you get different coverages and defenses,” Roderick said. “It’s also a shorter menu of plays. That menu of plays can dry up really fast if that is all you do for four quarters. Jake is really good in that area of the game and the players have been executing it very well, but I don’t think you can do that for the whole game.”

He also cautioned that picking up the tempo too much would adversely affect the Cougar defense.

“We stay on the field for a long time and our defense gets a lot of rest,” Roderick said. “If you start going faster, then the defense defends a lot more snaps. Our defense did a great job on Saturday but they only defended eight possessions, while the normal number is about 12. It’s playing team football and finding the right balance for all three phases.”

BYU will look to show offensive improvement when it plays at No. 21-ranked Arizona State at Mountain America Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, on Saturday (1:30 p.m. MT, ESPN.”