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PROVO — BYU men’s basketball only had three seniors in the 2015-16 season. But boy, did they show up Friday night.
Chase Fischer scored a game-high 24 points — including the final 12 for BYU — as the Cougars held off Virginia Tech, 80-77 in the National Invitation Tournament second round at the Marriott Center.
“I feel the responsibility, and I know Kyle (Collinsworth) does, too. He steps up a lot and saves our team, so I was just trying to make plays for my team when they need it,” said Fischer, who made 4-of-9 from the 3-point line. “It’s different guys every night. We’ve had freshmen, Nick and Zac, who have made huge plays this year as well.”
Fischer gave BYU a 75-73 lead with his fourth 3-pointer of the game with 4:21 remaining, the 10th lead change of the second half and the 14th of the game.
But the Cougars never trailed again. The senior from Ripley, West Virginia, then scored in transition with 3:04 to put BYU up 77-73 — the Cougars’ largest lead since opening the half — to hold off the Hokies in a game that also featured 11 ties.
“Watching them on film, you can tell that every game they are in is going to be a junkyard battle,” Fischer said of the Hokies. “They’ve got some physical dudes, and Buzz Williams’ teams are always really tough from what I watched at Marquette.
“They drive the ball really hard, make it difficult to get rebounds, and get on the line a lot. This is one we had to grind out, and a lot of dudes made plays.”
Fellow senior Kyle Collinsworth added 18 points, 10 rebounds and six assists for the Cougars, and freshman Zac Seljaas added 11 points for the Cougars (25-10). Teammate Nick Emery supplied 10 points, three rebounds and two assists for BYU, and fifth-year senior Nate Austin finished with four points and three of BYU’s seven blocked shots in the win.
The Cougars advanced to the NIT quarterfinals, which will be played Tuesday at 7 p.m. MT in Provo. The Cougars will face the winner of Saturday’s game between Wagner and Creighton. BYU shot just 42 percent from the field, but made eight 3-pointers — half of them by Fischer — and held the prolific foul-shooting Hokies to just 12-of-21 from the free-throw line.
“They were consistently attacking us,” Collinsworth said. “When they missed, they also attacked the glass. I figured they would send a lot of guys to the boards and try to create that advantage instead of getting back. They’re really aggressive, that’s their style of play, and that’s what makes them so tough.”
Seth Allen led Virginia Tech (20-15) with 22 points, and All-ACC honorable mention Zach LeDay had 17 points and 14 rebounds for the Hokies.
BYU jumped out to a nine-point lead with 11:32 left in the half, but the Hokies tied the game on a shot clock-beating jumper by LeDay, capping a 7-0 run over two and a half minutes with 6:53 left in the half.
Collinsworth scored two of his team-high 10 points in the first half on a dunk to keep the Cougars just ahead, 28-25 with 6:07 left as both teams struggled to consistently stop each other through the opening 20 minutes. Virginia Tech responded on the other end, and Allen gave the Hokies a 29-28 lead with 5:22 on the first-half clock with a quick-release jumper.
But Fischer capped a frantic sequence — and a 5-0 run by BYU — with a deep triple to give the Cougars a 35-31 with 1:09, and Seljaas swished a three of his own on an in-bound play with 12 seconds remaining to give BYU a 38-34 halftime lead.
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The Hokies cut the lead to two, 44-42 on Justin Bibbs’ layup just under four minutes into the second half, then tied the game at 47-47 on Chris Clarke’s driving three-point play with 13:46 left.
Kerry Blackshear gave the Hokies their first lead of the second half at 54-52 on a jumper, and Allen drained a 3-pointer a minute later to take a 57-54 lead into the final 10 minutes.
“I know what he wants his guys to do and how they want to play,” BYU coach Dave Rose said of good friend Williams’ squads. “They’re aggressive, they’re physical and they didn’t back down one bit. I thought we put a nice run on them early in the game, and they didn’t flinch.”
BYU retook the lead at 60-58 when Seljaas was fouled on a 3-point attempt with 8:36 left, but the Hokies marched down on the ensuing possession and tied the game on Allen’s triple 11 seconds later as BYU and Virginia Tech exchanged the lead 10 times in a wild second half.
“It was a great game,” Rose said. “The most impressive thing for me was watching two teams that want to keep playing really late in the season. They just kept battling. In those games, you have to figure out how to make one or two more plays than the other team. They were really good late in the second half of isolating us and driving us, and getting to the rim.
“In the last three or four minutes, we got a little lucky. But for me, the most impressive thing was watching two teams that want to keep playing.”
NOTES — BYU football coach Kalani Sitake and wide receivers coach Ben Cahoon spent the second half in the student section behind the west basket. Sitake, who wore a royal-blue BYU baseball jersey given to hime earlier by coach Mike Littlewood, joined the crowd after visiting with his daughters and a group of fans behind the Virginia Tech bench at halftime to chant, yell — and take a selfie, naturally.
