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LAS VEGAS — BYU’s hopes of earning the West Coast Conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament were turned aside with a 91-75 loss to Gonzaga in the conference tournament championship game Tuesday night.
But there was a moment in the game where BYU’s inability to contain Gonzaga’s inside presence seemed to put the contest out of reach.
And then BYU coach Dave Rose did something different.
Kyle Wiltjer, who finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds to lead Gonzaga (32-2), scored on a 3-pointer from the wing to give the Bulldogs a 67-59 lead with 11:45 left in the game. A subsequent block on the other end gave the Zags all kinds of momentum — prompting Rose to use a seldom-used tactic to motivate his team.
Rose ran after an official, ripped off his jacket, slammed it to the hardwood floor in an emotional rage and roared against the striped shirt with fiery passion until he was pulled away by his assistants.
“He coaches with a lot of passion, and he wants to win worse than anyone,” said Haws, who had 15 points, four rebounds and four assists in the title game. “That fight gives us a lot. I thought our team played with a lot of passion tonight, and that passion spread to the team.”
The move earned the coach a technical foul, but after Kevin Pangos made the two accompanying free throws, BYU (25-9) rattled off a 6-2 run in 96 seconds to pull within six points on Tyler Haws' drive to the rim with 8:55 remaining.
Obviously, the Cougars took Rose's message to heart.
The rally was the closest BYU would come in the game, as the Zags would respond with a 9-4 run of their own that essentially slammed the door on their auto-bid hopes. But the energy of the game and the national television broadcast gave BYU another statement mailed directly to the selection committee.
“I know this team is going to play again,” said Haws, one of four seniors on the team. “We’re not done.”
Kyle Collinsworth had another standout performance less than 24 hours after his NCAA-record sixth triple-double of the season. The junior from Provo put up 28 points, eight rebounds and five assists against the Zags, and he helped spur a near comeback midway through the second half.
“He’s a great teammate, a really fun guy to play with,” Haws said of Collinsworth. “He makes everyone better on the floor, on both ends. He plays with a lot of energy and passion, and everyone on our team feeds off that. He’s a huge part of our team.”
The Cougars struggled to contain Gonzaga’s inside presence, and 7-foot-1 center Przemek Karnowski had 12 points and four rebounds — including six points on the same play three times in a row that finished with a hook shot over his right shoulder with 14:35 left in the game.
BYU’s bigs of Josh Sharp, Corbin Kaufusi, Luke Worthington and Isaac Neilson picked up a combined 14 fouls while trying to switch and defense the Gonzaga big man.
“Those games are rough,” Collinsworth said of the physical nature of the game. “Down low you can wrestle. But on the perimeter, you can’t. You just never know what kind of a game it’s going to be. You just have to come in, adjust to how they are calling the game. Unfortunately, their bigs had big nights.”
Wiltjer and Pangos also fared better than in the Zags’ loss to BYU less than two weeks ago. Pangos, who earned all-tournament team honors alongside Collinsworth, Haws, Wiltjer and Karnowski. Pangos had 16 points and five assists as one of six Gonzaga players to score in double figures.
“(Wiltjer) had a good night tonight,” Rose said. “I think the difference between tonight and last week was the play of him and Pangos. They both had good shooting nights tonight.”
West Coast Conference All-Tournament Team
| Player | Class | Pos | School |
| Kyle Wiltjer (MOP) | Jr. | F | Gonzaga |
| Kyle Collinsworth | Jr. | G | BYU |
| Tyler Haws | Sr. | G | BYU |
| Kevin Pangos | Sr. | G | Gonzaga |
| Przemek Karnowski | Jr. | C | Gonzaga |
BYU faced Gonzaga in the tournament finals for the second-straight year, and the Cougars’ quest for a conference title in Rose’s tenure as head coach once again came up short. BYU’s last tournament championship came in 2001, when they were in the Mountain West.
“I think the most difficult thing is for this group of guys. We had a good plan, got along and came up short,” Rose said. “For this group of guys, I’ll always feel like we could have done a little more. But that’s a good team. The Zags are one of the best teams in the country, and I think we put up a pretty good fight. We’ll have to live with that.”
The Cougars will sweat out the selection process on the bubble, but signs are pretty good of them being included when the final group of 68 is announced by the NCAA Selection Committee on national television.
Where they land is anyone’s guess. But the lessons learned from Tuesday’s championship game, as well as the previous week of a tourney-style atmosphere, could go a long way in BYU’s ability to make some noise next week.
Gonzaga coach Mark Few mentioned during his postgame celebration that BYU “looks like a tournament team.”
Rose didn’t explicitly agree, but he gave a nod to Few’s comments in his own postgame interview.
“I think Mark is a really smart man,” he said. “I think he’s a really good coach.
“I think that there is a committee that will decide this. If they’ve watched us play, I think they’ll feel pretty good about putting is in their tournament.”
