Utah State will kick off its season at home with a game against a future Mountain West team, one it hasn’t seen on the field in more than 10 years and hasn’t faced in the regular season since the 1960s.
Both teams are in fairly similar boats this offseason. Not a whole lot is expected of either team as USU was picked to finish ninth in its conference with UTEP being projected similarly (there’s no official media poll this year as Conference USA ditched theirs, but both ESPN and SI.com have predicted the Miners to be in the 8-9 range).
This is the in-depth preseason preview of Utah State’s first opponent of the season.
Game Info
- Game Day: Aug. 30
- Location: Merlin Olsen Field (Logan, UT)
- Kickoff Time: 5:30 p.m.
- TV Broadcast: CBS Sports Network
- Radio Broadcast: KVNU 102.1 FM / 610 AM
Quick-Hit Info on UTEP
- Head Coach: Scotty Walden (2nd season at UTEP, 3-9 record)
- 2024 Record: 3-9
- 2024 Offense Rank: 122nd (19.5 points per game)
- 2024 Defense Rank: 113th (32.3 points allowed per game)
- Returning Production Rank — 73rd
- Returning Starters — (6 offense, 5 defense)
- 2025 Preseason Average Ranking — 123.5
History of Utah State vs this opponent
- All-Time Series: Utah St. leads 3-0
- First-Ever Meeting: Sept. 17, 1960 (Utah St. won 20-7)
- Most Recent Meeting: Dec. 20, 2014 (Utah St. won 21-6)
Outside from a home-and-home series across the 1960 and 1961 seasons, Utah State and UTEP have met one time, in the 2014 New Mexico Bowl. The Aggies have taken home the win on each occasion. UTEP is joining the Mountain West next year but will not be conference mates with Utah State as the latter will move to the Pac-12 next July.
Opposing Players to Watch
- Skyler Locklear (QB)
- Kenny Odom (WR)
- Kam Thomas (WR/PR)
- Hashaun Wilson (RB)
- Derek Burns (DT)
- KD Johnson (DT)
- Micah Davey (LB)
- Xavier Smith (S)
- Tanner Cragun (K) – former Utah State athlete
The Miners in 2024
Prior to the season UTEP parted ways with head coach Dana Dimel after a 3-9 season, hoping to find more success through new hire Scotty Walden. The incoming Walden had seen success at the Division III and FCS levels, coaching Austin Peay to back-to-back conference titles in 2022 and 2023. Unfortunately, the Miners had exactly the same success as the year before, with a 3-9 overall record for a second straight season on an arguably easier schedule of schedule.
The season kicked off poorly with a 40-7 loss at Nebraska in a buy game but got quickly worse when the Miners lost at home, 27-24, to FCS side Southern Utah the very next week. UTEP wouldn’t get its first win until Oct. 16 when it beat Florida International 30-21. That actually began what was a relatively much better second half of the season in which UTEP went 3-3 in its final six games (though those three victories were against 4-8 Florida International, 2-10 Kennesaw State and 3-9 New Mexico State).
2025 Season Prospects
Despite an identical (by record) season to the 2023 campaign that got the previous coach fired, there was some initial optimism at the end of last season. Walden had preached a long-term mindset and the team had placed four players on the Conference USA All-Freshman team (tied for most by anyone in the league). Walden has also landed the best recruiting class in Conference USA in back-to-back seasons.
Perhaps a little too predictably, given the state of modern college sports, three of those four promising freshmen transferred to bigger programs. Only linebacker Stratton Shufelt has stuck around to work his way up the depth chart toward becoming a star player.
Freshmen weren’t the only losses UTEP took. It lost nearly all of its running back production and most of its starters on defense. Despite this, the Miners rank a passable 73rd in returning production. Much of this comes from returning QB Skyler Locklear and having his top two pass-catching targets, Kenny Odom and Kam Thomas, also back for another season.
There has been some rumbling about whether Locklear would keep his job as the starting quarterback, mainly because UTEP landed former five-star recruit Malachi Nelson. But while Nelson’s high school recruit status still drives headlines, he’s now on his third team in three seasons — first at USC, then Boise State last year and UTEP in 2025 — casting doubt on whether Nelson will ever live up to his five-star rating. So far, Locklear’s status as QB1 does not appear to be in serious jeopardy. For a Week 1 matchup, it’s unlikely that Utah State will see Nelson behind center, barring injury or a catastrophic early performance from Locklear.
Part of Locklear’s job security perhaps comes from him spending three seasons under Walden, two at Austin Peay and then last year at UTEP. Putting it that way does inflate Locklear’s status a bit as it’s important to note that 2024, his redshirt sophomore season, was his first time being a full-time starter. Locklear threw for 1,583 yards (158.3 per game) and had 10 touchdowns to six interceptions. Those stats don’t quite tell the full story as Locklear was a highly inconsistent QB when it came to production. He had multiple games of 295-plus yards, including 327 yards with four touchdowns against Kennesaw State, but also had four games where he threw for less than 100 yards.
Locklear is also a minor threat to run. Officially, he ran for 237 yards and two touchdowns, though that includes yards lost on sacks. According to Pro Football Focus tracking, Locklear gained 300 yards exactly on designed runs and scrambles on pass plays.
As noted earlier, Locklear will have his top two receivers back for 2025, led by Odom who caught 46 passes for 741 yards and eight touchdowns last year to earn Second Team All-CUSA honors. Thomas caught a team-high 47 passes for 532 yards and two touchdowns and also brought high-level punt return skills. His highlight as a returner came on a 93-yard house call against New Mexico State. Bolstered by that special teams score, Thomas averaged 20.0 yards per punt return (and a still-very-solid 11.9 without the TD) which led to him being named First Team All-CUSA as a punt returner at the end of the season.
UTEP brought in weapons via the portal to compliment its returning cast. Charlotte transfer Hashaun Wilson made his way to El Paso after two seasons as a highly efficient backup with the 49ers. He’s averaged 6.1 yards per carry in 31 career appearances. Last year he split carries with teammate Cartevious Norton. But despite the latter getting a larger share of the touches (129 to 91), it was Wilson who performed the best, leading the team with 559 rushing yards and tying with Norton for the team lead with seven rushing TDs. A likely much higher share of carries in 2025, combined with an offensive line that returns three starters, including preseason CUSA Watch List candidate Mark Robinson, could very well lead to a great individual year for Wilson and the run game as a whole.
The key for the entire offensive unit will be progression and development. As a younger unit last year they ranked 122nd in FBS in points per game. UTEP only scored more than 24 points three times all year (and not surprisingly won all three of those games). With a decent amount of returning talent, internal development could go a long way into getting the Miners into the top-100 in scoring offense for the first time in a few years.
Xavier Smith leads the UTEP defensive unit that is also aiming for significant improvement, though it may be harder for that side of the ball than for the offense. The Miners rank 111th in returning production on defense (the offense ranks 42nd) with Smith and defensive tackle KD Johnson as really the only two significant producers back in the saddle. Smith tallied 78 tackles (not too far off the team-lead of 87) with one TFL and five passes defended. Johnson finished fourth on the team in TFLs with nine and had 3.5 TFLs.
These two will try and see the Miners into the future under new defensive coordinator Bobby Daly, who has spent the last six seasons as the defensive coordinator at Montana State. His defenses at MSU helped the Bobcats to FCS playoff berths every season Daly was with the team.
Preseason Game Prediction — Comfortable win
This is one of the easiest games on the schedule for the Aggies and it’s also going to be the game in which its opponent knows the least about them. All of Bronco Mendenhall’s secrecy this offseason should pay off the most in this game. The crowd should also be one of the larger ones as students and the community as a whole rush in to see this team for the very first time, which will only provide more energy to Utah State. Calling it a “comfortable win” could be an understatement as the Aggies could win in a blowout if all goes well. For now, the prediction is optimistic, but on the cautious side of things.
There’s a world in which this game ends up like the Temple game last year, where the Aggies succumb to a team it really shouldn’t be losing to, but that’s the disaster scenario. If Utah State ends up losing this game, it’ll likely be a rough year.
