Provo • San Diego came into the Marriott Center on a four-game losing streak and looking for its first West Coast Conference win. Well, the Toreros didn’t find it in Provo.
Instead, BYU avenged last year’s WCC tournament loss to USD by beating the Toreros 93-70 on Thursday night.
“That was embarrassing last year, for myself, for the team, for everyone,” Connor Harding said. “That was kind of our pep talk, 'you remember what they did to us last year.' So, hopefully we can put it on them every single time we play those guys.”
Once again, it was a complete team effort with six Cougars scoring in double figures. But this time, it was Kolby Lee leading the charge.
Most impressively, the majority of Lee's points came from the same shot: a quick.
While similar to a floater, Lee explained that the shot, which assistant coach Chris Burgess has been working on with him since the offseason, gets out of his hands too quick to really get guarded.
“Honestly, aside from the fans cheering, it felt like another normal game to me,” Lee said. “My teammates just — they hit me, they believe in me and I was able to make shots.”
The sophomore scored a career- and team-high 21 points against the Toreros on a perfect 8-of-8 shooting, and 4 of 6 from the line. He was followed by TJ Haws (19), Jake Toolson (14), Dalton Nixon (12), Alex Barcello (11) and Harding (11).
Throughout the second half, The ROC went from simply chanting “Kolby” to chanting “MVP” anytime Lee made a play, whether offensively or defensively. The sophomore also added five rebounds and one steal.
“Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about,” Lee said. “We’ve got better players on the team than me, but it was kind of cool — I can’t lie. But it’s not about me, it’s about this team. The only thing we look forward to is winning.”
Harding knew Lee was going to have a big game after seeing his teammate have a big practice the day before.
“It doesn't surprise me that he just went off,” Harding said.
After starting the game on a 6-0 run, the Cougars struggled to find the basket and allowed the Toreros to go on a 13-3 run. BYU trailed by as many as eight points and also kept struggling with the long shot throughout the former part of the first half, until Barcello was able to get one in.
Slowly, the Cougars started chipping away at their deficit.
“I think the biggest thing is, basketball is a game of runs and you have to fight through your frustration,” Harding said. “We just got some stops and we made some plays. The biggest thing was just getting control of the tempo of the game eventually. The refs called a couple of fouls and we were slow out of the gates, but eventually we brought some energy and some force and I think that’s what changed the atmosphere of the game.”
BYU was hit with three consecutive fouls during a single USD possession, but after a Torero turnover, Nixon ran along the baseline for a dunk and Zac Seljaas got a steal to set up Barcello with another 3-pointer for the Cougars to regain the lead.
After a couple more lead changes, the Cougars eventually closed out the first half on a 14-2 run to pull away 48-36 at halftime.
BYU seemed more in control at the start of the second half, opening on a 10-3 run. The Cougars ended up leading by as many as 29 points by the time the Toreros recovered themselves enough to put together a modest 8-0 run.
But the damage was done.
Coach Mark Pope enjoyed how, after a competitive start to the first half, the team didn’t stay frustrated long, which led to such a dominating win.
“We kind of almost took a direct route from not playing great, skipped over the frustration and got to the anger and the fight, the fight of the game,” Pope said. “And these guys had great fight the second 10 minutes of the first half and carried it through the game. That’s a good sign. If we can change our DNA where our response to things going sideways is to fight and we actually skip over the frustration step, that’s really good.”
