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PROVO, Utah (Dec. 30, 2006) -- The Cougar basketball team capped off the BYU Holiday Classic Saturday night beating Seton Hall 77-68 and becoming the 2006 tournament champions. The first game of Saturday's tournament play featured a blowout with Oral Roberts defeating Liberty 90-58.
BYU improves its record to 10-4 on the season with the win, and Seton Hall falls to 8-4. BYU's Keena Young was the tournament's MVP and BYU's Lee Cummard, Seton Hall's Brian Laing, Liberty's Larry Blair and Caleb Green and Ken Tutt of Oral Roberts were selected to the 2006 BYU Holiday Classic All-Tournament Team.
"I think our team grew a lot in the three days," said BYU head coach Dave Rose. "Things are coming together going into league play. "
The Cougars took awhile to find their rhythm early on as they missed their first four shots and turned the ball over three times. Young finally got BYU going when he hit a fade-away baseline jumper to put BYU on the board. Young finished the night with 26 points and nine boards.
Seton Hall started out hot claiming a 12-4 advantage over the Cougars, but guard Jimmy Balderson ignited the team taking a charge at the 14:30 mark. On the next two possessions, BYU hit back-to-back triples by Cummard and Ainge to cut the deficit to 12-10. The Arizona-native guards Cummard and Ainge had career nights with 16 points each and 12 and nine boards, respectively. All of those stats were career or season highs.
Mike Rose and Vuk Ivanovic gave BYU a huge lift off the bench in the first half. Ivanovic had a career-high four blocks, and Rose grabbed a steal and hit a deep three to give BYU its first lead 21-20 with 10 minutes remaining. On the next possession Cummard crashed the boards and slammed home a one-handed dunk off a rebound that had all 10,103 fans in the Marriot Center on their feet screaming.
The Pirates maintained control of the game throughout the half forcing 15 BYU first-half turnovers and scoring 24 points off them. Seton Hall led at the midway mark 43-35. The eight-point deficit marked the first time the Cougars have trailed at half for this season.
"Seton Hall is very athletic and strong," Coach Rose said. "We had to figure out a way to keep them away from the basket."
The Cougars began the second half attacking the basket and forcing the Pirates to commit six fouls before the first media timeout but were only able to cut the deficit to seven. The Pirates had problems all night getting a body on Cummard as he once again grabbed an offensive board and converted a two-point bucket to tie the game at 58 with 7:52. The Cougars then tightened up with a zone defense on Seton Hall and took a six-point lead at 67-61 when Broadus nailed a three with 5:13 remaining.
Plaisted then let the Pirates know how difficult it is to win in the Marriott Center when he got a huge block, ran the entire floor and ended up with a two-handed throw-down to give BYU its largest lead of the game, 71-64.
"They had everything going their way," said Seton Hall head coach Bobby Gonzalez. "We needed to hit some big shots at the end and we didn't pull it off." Down the stretch the Cougars' defense was spectacular as they held Seton Hall to just seven points in the last five and a half minutes of the game. BYU held on to the lead and extended its current win streak to five games as the Cougars beat the Pirates 77-68.
BYU will look to extend its 23-game home winning streak next Saturday when the Cougars open up Mountain West Conference play hosting San Diego State. The game will tipoff at 3:30 p.m. and can be seen on Versus.
