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PROVO -- After an eleven-point game rut at the start of the game, Brigham Young University walked off the court Tuesday with a 15-point win (93-78) against Buffalo University.
Although the point gap between the two teams was clear in the end, BYU ultimately shares a rather similar style to Buffalo. With the Cougars having back-to-back games against Buffalo ending with 90-plus points, BYU head coach Dave Rose somewhat attributed, in a post-game coach’s show, the high scores to a necessary means of overcoming the teams’ similarities.
“I love Reggie’s team,” Rose said. “When you watch multiple games of his team playing you can see a lot of similarities — where they get really good shooters from the perimeter, their post guys are really aggressive, they play on attack … you watch a college basketball game with almost 50 assists, I think 49 tonight, and that doesn’t happen. You can through all the box scores tonight and there won’t be many that have more than that.”
After calling a timeout less than 90 seconds into the game, Rose’s concern for his Cougars began to diminish once Anson Winder was subbed in at the two. At 16:20 in the first half, Anson sank his first three, which began his six minutes and 20 seconds drive down a road leading to 17 more points. In the post-game coach’s show, Rose praised Anson’s game-changing run.
“I told the guys in the locker room that those starters should all put up something a little extra in Anson Winder’s stocking for Christmas,” Rose said. “Because what he did was get us right back into the game. He came in and started banging in shots.”
Winder however didn’t request any extra stocking stuffers from his performance.
“Coach wanted me to come in and help the team as much as I could, and I was able to do that all right,” Anson said.
Rose used words a little stronger than “all right” however to describe Anson’s performance.
“You don’t do this as a coach or as players but if somebody to this point wanted to say , OK, who’s the most valuable player on this BYU team?' to this point this year, this kid Anson has to be somewhere in that conversation for what he’s done for this team.”
With a 90-plus score, Winder wasn’t the only one of the Cougars stacking up impressive points though. Zylstra ended the night with a career-high 26 points (4-4 on the line) and Carlino reached a double-double with 10 points, 11 assists and 7 rebounds.
With only their second game down with new point-guard Carlino, the Cougars are still seeking to solidify the shape of their print in this league. Ironically, it is quite apparent that among this path exploration, the Cougars are seeking to walk a straight line towards winning.
BYU is now gearing up for one last pre-conference game against Division Two UC Santa Barbara on Thursday in the Marriott Center.
