Did BYU basketball turn a corner after good week in Big 12 play?


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PROVO โ€” One game does not make a season, or even two for a sport like college basketball where "what have you done for me lately?" is the mantra through March Madness.

But BYU basketball may have just had the kind of week capable of sparking a season.

If nothing else, it was anything but an absolutely terrible, no good, very bad week for the Cougars, who earned their first true road win late Tuesday night at Colorado and turned around to collective their first Big 12 winning streak Saturday against the Bearcats.

Did BYU punch its ticket to the NCAA Tournament, or even solidify itself as a contender in the conference after wins over 12-7 Cincinnati or a Colorado team that dropped to 0-8 in league play with a 78-63 loss to Arizona?

Not hardly. But after the Cougars (13-6, 4-4 Big 12) lost three in a row near the start of conference play โ€” admittedly, against a road-heavy stretch that included No. 7 Houston โ€” and suffered a 73-72 overtime setback to in-state rival Utah, the ensuing week was just what a team and its 6-foot-9 five-star freshman needed.

"I think a lot of people were thinking I was in bad shape lately, but I'm feeling better and better game to game," said Egor Demin, the aforementioned NBA-level point guard who connected on 3-of-5 3-pointers for 15 points to go along with seven assists and five rebounds, his highest scoring impact since Thanksgiving weekend. "Today, I was just enjoying playing here."

If the turnaround comes, it started Tuesday, when BYU got big contributions from Trevin Knell and Mawot Mag in a win over the slumping Buffaloes that won't jump out as a signature win on paper but may have unlocked something in a team that hadn't won a true road game before (or since, in ... uhhh, fewer chances).

"I just think we needed a win," BYU coach Kevin Young said. "We needed to play well, which we have. And we had; this is what I told the guys when we had that three-game stretch where we came up short. To lose by a possession doesn't mean you played bad; we played good, but just not good enough to win.

"The sky wasn't falling. I thought our guys never got too down. Probably the thing I love the most about this group is the way they approach every day. We rarely have a bad day; that gives me confidence, and lets me know that they're jiving with what we're doing. But it's a lot easier to get that belief when you win. So I think it was a galvanizing moment to get that win, and mainly because of the way we got that win, coming back from down 10. I think we're building on the things that we're doing."

Then there was Richie Saunders, who continues to elevate his game from last season's supporting cast to rising star, scoring 25 points against the Buffs and 21 with five 3-pointers against Cincinnati that marks the fifth time this season the former Wasatch Academy standout has topped 20 points.

A year ago โ€” in a different role and under a very different coaching staff led by former top-level NBA assistant Kevin Young โ€” Saunders hit that 20-point mark just twice, including a season-high tying 20 on 7-of-12 shooting in a 68-63 road loss to then-No. 6 Iowa State.

"I am playing a different position, for the most part, where I'm coming one way instead of always towards the basket," Saunders said. "That allows me to get some different looks than I historically had."

In that new position, Saunders has blossomed into BYU's leading scorer, the closest thing to a go-to bucket the Cougars have while averaging 14.9 points on 51.6% shooting with 4.1 rebounds and a couple of assists per game.

The 6-foot-5 wing from Riverton is one of three double-digit scorers on the team, with Fousseyni Traore right behind at 9.4 points per game. And when it all comes together, like it did Saturday night in the second half against the Bearcats where BYU converted 11-of-15 from the perimeter and outrebounded Cincinnati 27-15 on the defensive glass, the results were striking.

The next step is building on it, beginning Tuesday night against Baylor (13-6, 5-3 Big 12).

"I think there are two different ways to think about it," Saunders said. "One is we had to go through so much adversity, and from that we learned. And It is a little bit of turning a corner; we had to learn how to finish games, so many details that it takes to win games that we had to have come together and fix.

"But I think it's been a bit of a gradual build, which leads to turning a corner. And we've got a big one coming up on Tuesday โ€” just like every game."

Cougars on the air

BYU (13-6, 4-4 Big 12) vs. Baylor (13-6, 5-3 Big 12)

  • Date: Tuesday, Jan. 28
  • Tipoff: 7 p.m. MT
  • TV: ESPN2
  • Streaming: WatchESPN
  • Series: Baylor leads, 7-5

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