ALBUQUERQUE - Luck or taking advantage of opportunities?

It doesn’t really matter, as long as you win. BYU’s football team can relate.

The Cougars weren’t particularly sharp Saturday night against New Mexico, and I’m being kind here, but they had enough stones to smack back each time the Lobos tried to deliver a punch. Making the big play when the football bounced their way, the Cougars won 31-24 to record their first road win this season.

Oh, sure, it was ugly, all right. But at closing time, everything is beautiful when your team scores more points than the opposition.

“We don’t really care what it looks like,” said BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall, with a look of relief splashed across his face in the hallway outside the team’s locker room.

“The bottom line is winning; that’s what it’s all about to win the conference championship.”

Sporting a gash below his lower lip, Max Hall exemplified Mendenhall’s statement. The gutty sophomore had the worst statistical game of his young career (18 of 40 for 251 yards), but he did just enough.

After misfiring on several deep attempts, Hall scratched the itch to go long in the third quarter. So he tossed a perfect ball to Austin Collie, who hauled it in for a 59-yard touchdown pass.

With the score tied at 21-21, Hall found Dennis Pitta in the end zone for a 14-yard touchdown pass. And then facing a third-and-10 in the final minute, Hall scrambled for the first down to effectively run out the clock.

Whatever it takes, brother.

Just ask Collie, who got hurt seemingly on every throw that went his way. A bum ankle forced him down several times.

“I kept calling him a wuss a told him to get up,” Hall joked.

Linebacker Bryan Kehl set the example for BYU’s defense. On the fourth play from scrimmage, Kehl caught a deflected ball and raced in for a 36-yard touchdown. Later, he forced Donovan Porterie to fumble on a fourth down and managed to recover it.

Against UCLA and Tulsa, the bounces went the other way.

“We were due,” Kehl said.

Yeah, it probably was luck that Chris Bolden was in position to recover New Mexico’s fumble off a punt late in the game. But it wasn’t luck that Ian Dulan fell on a fumble in the fourth quarter after several teammates knocked the ball loose from Matt Quillen.

And it wasn’t luck when offensive lineman David Oswald pounced on Harvey Unga’s fumble late in the game with the Cougars clinging to a four-point lead.

Luck is for losers to complain about not having. Winners get on the bus and go home.

“I told [our players] that we turned the ball over way too many times to expect a win,” said New Mexico Rocky Long. “I appreciated their effort; we played hard, but BYU is [not a]  better football team than we are. Make no mistake, they deserved to win the game, but they’re no better football team than we are.”

Maybe not, but there’s only one Mountain West team with a 2-0 record, and it isn’t the Lobos. It’s those Cougars, no matter how ugly it looks.