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PROVO — No. 13 Utah took down BYU, 65-61, Wednesday night at the Marriott Center with a balanced offensive attack led by Delon Wright. BYU struggled with its shot selection and Cougar head coach Dave Rose called the loss a scattered performance.
“It was a hard-fought game, really two teams just battling each other. The one thing from this game is that both teams were really competing,” Rose said. “I mean we had a hard time getting shots. They did a good job of taking us out of things and getting us scattered a little bit, but we tried to get a run back and finish it at the end, but we came short.”
BYU shot 36.9 percent compared with Utah’s 45.8 percent. Tyler Haws had 23 points and eight rebounds for the Cougars, while Kyle Collinsworth added 17 points and nine rebounds and Anson Winder was the only other Cougar in double-digits with 10 points.
Wright led the Utes with 18 points and 11 rebounds, while Kenneth Ogbe and Dallin Bachynski added seven points apiece.
“We just didn’t make buckets,” Haws said. “(Utah) slows the game down and kind of takes the air out of the ball a little bit and we just didn’t make shots when we needed to. We have got to give them all the credit in the world. They are a great team and they are good at what they do. They hold it up top and then they drive hard and make good decisions. They hit free throws in the second half and had some big 3s and we couldn’t match it.”
BYU only had three players scoring in double-digits, while the remainder of the team all had less than three points apiece. Haws doesn’t consider the skewed scoring a worry though and was optimistic about his teammates.
I mean we had a hard time getting shots. They did a good job of taking us out of things and getting us scattered a little bit, but we tried to get a run back and finish it at the end, but we came short.
–Dave Rose
“We just need to keep shooting our shots,” Haws said. “We have got lots of scorers on this team and guys need to stay confident and keep playing the way we play and keep shooting our shots and they are going to start falling.”
Also, the Cougars only got to the line 10 times compared with Utah’s 30. Utah outrebounded BYU, 43-31.
Rose attributed the lopsided free throws to the Cougars shot selection.
“We jumped up and took a lot of quick jump shots and they were pretty good at driving it at the rim and causing us problems around the basket,” Rose said. “We got really scattered. We were shooting quick shots and not shots that we are actually looking for but shots that were available and so we just took them. But a lot of that had to do with them taking us out of our sets. We are a pretty systematic team and when we get a catch in a certain play off of a set, we want to go shoot that thing and it isn’t available, and we need to do a better job.”
“(The loss) hurts,” Haws said. “These are tough loses and hopefully we can learn from them and get better from them. There are going to be more games like this and we have got to stick together and keep fighting, that’s all we can do. It’s a long season.”
BYU will look to rebound on the road at Weber State Saturday, while Utah will travel to take on No. 10 Kansas.
