There are two ways to go — maybe three — in surmising what took place with BYU and Iowa State in their Big 12 tournament game on Thursday.
One is to praise the offensive firepower so evident, these teams exploding for a combined total of 188 points, including (for the first time ever in a Big 12 tournament contest) teams putting up in excess of 100 points in the initial half. The other is to criticize what was too often an absence of defense at both ends by both teams.
Was it exciting (for a likely majority who love offense) or was it frustrating (for the less-common dirty-dog-defensive hounds out there)?
Or there’s a third option, which is related to the first, pumping it up even more: Good defense was played but the scintillating shotmaking and playmaking was even better. One aside here: the Big 12 refs seemed OK with allowing players with the ball to bump off defenders — Shaq-style — to better position themselves for their attempts.
Go ahead and decide for yourself, as you consider the outcome, a 96-92 BYU win. Whichever way you lean, it was a Cougar victory that substantiated what more and more people who follow BYU, as well as people in the Big 12 and around the country, are coming to believe: This is a darn good team. It is not your father’s or your mother’s version of BYU basketball. It’s their version, different and better, because Kevin Young has made it that.
It’s a deep pro-style team that relentlessly drives and kicks and spaces for made open 3-point shots, but that scores around the hoop, too. Against Iowa State, the Cougars hit 50 percent of their bombs, converting 18 of them, including a huge late deep ball from Richie Saunders, who took a pass to pretty much slam the door on the Cyclones. It was impressive and it was clutch.
“I was the person who got the shot,” Saunders said afterward, as though it was all just a matter of luck. It was not.
“We’re resilient,” he added. “We play hard every day.”
In this game, the Cougars from jump started hot, making shots here and there. The complication for them was that Iowa State, a team ranked five spots ahead of them in the national polls at No. 12, was flushing attempts from everywhere. Led by Curtis Jones over a relatively short span, Iowa State wiped away an early BYU lead as Jones scored 22 of the Cyclones’ 27 points. At the break, Iowa State held a 53-49 lead.
“He caught fire,” Young said.
“He was cooking,” said BYU’s Trey Stewart, who came in to help cover Jones.
The Cougars kept their offensive pace and their efficiency up, while the Cyclones could not. Even though Iowa State was missing a couple of key injured players, it still shot 56 percent for the game. BYU, though, grabbed more rebounds and collected 24 assists to 16 for the Cyclones.
The Cougars simply had more bodies available to them and, as they’ve done throughout the back half of the season, they used those bodies. Ten players saw the floor, all of them getting double-digit minutes, all but one of them getting 16-plus minutes. Backup big man Fousseyni Traore is a fine example of the usefulness of so many BYU players. In his 16 minutes, he scored 15 points, was 5-of-6 from the floor and made all five of his free throws. When starter Keba Keita was on the court for his 24 minutes, he scored nine points and hauled 10 boards.
And so it goes with BYU. Everybody’s in the pool. Saunders leads the way, with so many of his friends diving in behind him. In his first season at BYU, then, Young has created what is the essence of a full team that plays team ball.
“Everybody’s bought in,” said a smiling Trevin Knell, who made all four of his shots, all of them 3-pointers, and two free throws, going for 14 points.
In the aftermath of the league’s quarterfinal round, the question hung in the air as to whether BYU beating Iowa State really mattered. Perhaps it’s a question yet to be answered — answered in a different tournament, and in the run-up to that tournament, that commences in the days ahead. The Cougars have and had already done their qualification work for the Big Dance. Exactly where they will be seeded there is one thing, how they will play there is another. But their ability to win two straight games over Iowa State, having also defeated the dangerous Cyclones in Ames a little over a week ago, as well as their current win streak, says something about their tenacity, their toughness and their togetherness.
They face a different pack of Cougars, the ones from Houston, in a Big 12 semifinal on Friday, That will be a severe test, considering that Houston lost just one Big 12 game this season, and it put a beatdown on BYU by the sorry count of 86-55.
“They smacked us,” Young said. That was at Houston’s Fertitta Center on Jan. 4, weeks before BYU found itself, found its identity, before it became what BYU was on Thursday … well, BYU.
Speaking of his team, Young said after the win: “Our guys … play for each other. And I thought that was on full display.”
The aforementioned people who follow BYU, people in the Big 12 and around the country, will now see for themselves if BYU can remain that, what it seems to be, a new iteration of BYU, a transformed version of a basketball program that has struggled against both big- and small-time competition in significant tournament settings for years. Are the Cougars in a revised year of their own?
Everyone, those who love offense and even the dirty dogs who favor defense, eagerly await that answer.
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