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PROVO — The final regular-season BYU home game of the Kyle Collinsworth era ended with a loss to Gonzaga at the Marriott Center.
Though the senior from Provo High finished just two assists shy of his NCAA record-extending 12th triple-double, Collinsworth and the Cougars finished the regular season in the familiar No. 3 spot in the West Coast Conference after failing to clinch a chance to win or tie on four attempts in the final minute.
The end result — BYU's 71-68 defeat that gave the Zags at least a share of the WCC title — was predictable, though not for lack of effort or appeasing on the Cougars' end. Some might even call it expected; the Bulldogs (22-7, 14-3 WCC) struggled in 2015-16 compared to previous seasons in league play, but rallied the troops around WCC player of the year candidate Kyle Wiltjer, who finished with a game-high 21 points in his regular-season finale.
Gonzaga won its 18th conference title, and won or shared its 15th in the past 16 years with the road win Saturday night.
BYU tried to rally, and had several attempts at a final shot, but couldn't complete the comeback — in part due to a Zags' defensive play that coach Dave Rose said dryly was "a hold, but I guess it wasn't a foul."
Here are multiple angles of the hold on Kyle Collinsworth that wasn't called at the end of the BYU/Gonzaga game pic.twitter.com/vkj8sYRML3
— Jeremiah Jensen (@JJSportsBeat) February 28, 2016
Collinsworth took the diplomatic approach with the call, saying the officials have a difficult job made more difficult by the physical play between the Cougars and Bulldogs.
His team backed him up, too.
"The call on Kyle is tough — I think he got wrapped up," fellow senior Chase Fischer told reporters after the game. "But that was a really tough game to officiate. It was a high-level basketball game."
Collinsworth will inarguably go down as one of the greatest players to ever wear a BYU uniform. He tops the Cougars' all-time list in career assists and rebounds, and finishes top 10 in scoring, steals and games played after his 15-point, 15-rebound, eight-assist effort Saturday night.
His 11 career triple-doubles is a feat that might never be duplicated again, owing to the specialist nature of most college basketball players.
But the one stat that matters most has eluded him since his freshman year prior to serving a two-year LDS Church mission in Russia: a deep NCAA Tournament run.
Saturday night's loss does little to boost the Cougars' hopes of that run. BYU (22-8, 13-4 WCC) likely needs a tournament title to clinch passage into the NCAA Tournament via the league's autobid, which makes four days in Las Vegas the most important of the season.
The Cougars will take plenty of lessons into one final push for an NCAA invitation.
"That's how every game has to be," Collinsworth said. "You learn; I always take three things I did well and one thing to work on. That's the same thing we need to do with this team: realize what we did well, pick a thing to get better at, and then keep fighting."
The Provo High alum is pretty good at taking positives from disdainful situations. Collinsworth came back from a season-ending anterior cruciate ligament injury in the conference tourney two years ago to setting the records he is now.
But now his senior leadership will force him to teach the rest of his teammates how to grow from experience and adversity.
"It's tough, but there are always positives. It makes us more hungry," Collinsworth said. "When we play (Gonzaga) again, we are going to be really hungry. At this point, we have nothing to lose.
"It's hard to see the positives right now, but we'll find them, we'll accept them, and we'll make the most of it."
Held or not, BYU's loss to Gonzaga in the regular-season finale does little to deter the Cougars' end goal, Rose said. BYU will face Santa Clara in its WCC tourney opener Saturday.
"The bottom line is that a lot of things were going to have to go our way to get what we wanted from this game," he said. "We wanted to win and keep momentum. But we were going to have to beat them again to get where we really want."
