Not once, not even twice, Utah’s Clark Phillips III picked off Oregon State three times on Saturday inside Rice-Eccles Stadium.

It was the first time a Utah defensive back had three picks in a single game since 2009 and the first time for a Ute at home since 1970 (hat-tip to The Salt Lake Tribune’s Josh Newman for that one). As a result, Phillips got the game ball in the locker room after Utah put the finishing touches on a 42-16 win to move to 4-1.

The interceptions were Phillips’ second, third, and fourth of the season. The Lakewood, California native had two last year and one in five games during the 2020 campaign.

He spoke with the Pac-12 Network’s Yogi Roth and Ted Robinson about the performance after the game. He joked that he had three pick-sixes in one game in high school, so he didn’t quite match that on Saturday, but he did read tendencies well and made the Beavers pay for continuing to test him.

“I thought he had a fade route going up top on me, and he ended up breaking it down when he saw I was over the top of him,” he said in breaking down the first pick. “The moment when I looked at the quarterback and saw him kind of winding up, I thought, ‘Oh, this is my ball. This is going the other way.’ My man, the receiver, kudos to him. He tried to rip it away from me, turned into the DB, and I just said, ‘Nah.’ I tried to snag it from him and I was successful.”

With his three-INT performance, Phillips sits atop the Pac-12 leaderboard for the moment with four on the season now.