Nobody could think of a better way to measure the authenticity, the breadth and depth, the real reach of BYU’s run over the past month or so — an ascending haul that included nine straight Big 12 wins — than to play the Big 12’s best team in a semifinal game of the conference tournament.
It was all set: tournament talent, tournament toughness, tournament teams, tournament tape measure.
Oops, what’s this? Tournament timidity, a tournament takedown?
Yeah, BYU didn’t just get sized up in Kansas City on Friday evening by the Houston Cougars, an elite outfit that is likely to be a No. 1 seed in the coming NCAA Tournament, it got exposed. It got embarrassed. The tale of BYU’s tape came up 50 miles short, just like too many of their jump shots, in what turned into a 74-54 Houston thrashing.
“Our guys came out tense,” Kevin Young said.
Maybe, but they also came out with less speed, less force, less athleticism, less accuracy, less ability, all of which led to absolutely no chance of winning. Young’s guys shot just 20 percent in the opening half. They fell behind, 15-zip, and never climbed out of that hole. They trailed by 21 points at the break, fully broken.
“We couldn’t throw it in the ocean,” Young said.
BYU’s inability to score was at the center of its troubles, making at game’s end just 31 percent of its shots, just 21 percent of its 3-pointers, hitting a mere 6 of 28 of those deep heaves. But it was more than just bricking shots — the Cougars from Provo were jittery from the jump, possessing the ball like it was loaded with nitroglycerin.
It really looked as though BYU was defeated before it took the court, still shaken and shocked and scared from its last meeting with Houston — an 86-55 shellacking in early January — weeks before it went on to its aforementioned success. It seemed this time like the losing Cougars’ collective synapses misfired signals to various body parts, disabling them from completing basic basketball skills such as bouncing the ball, making clean passes, getting and hitting those open looks. Houston saw the effect it was having and bored straight ahead, taking no mercy.
The wave of difficulties for BYU crashed in such a manner that even when its Cougars semi-settled themselves here and there at the offensive end, they could not slow Houston’s attack going the other way. The exact count at the half was 41-20, and BYU’s overall ineffectiveness appeared even worse than the unbalanced numbers indicated.
The spacing that BYU had used to create so many quality made shots in its previous wins was wickedly disrupted by Houston’s sprawling defense. The drives and kicks, the ball screens, the dizzying-quick passes that forwent good shots to stir even better ones were fractured enough to knock BYU’s offense wholly out of rhythm.
Houston’s athletes were too quick for BYU, especially at the defensive end, and most certainly as various BYU players tried to make hay off the dribble, and even when distributing the ball inside and out, passers were crowded, completions interrupted, catches fumbled. When BYU got its shots off, to either reiterate or beat a dead mule, those jangled attempts flew awry.
There was an oh-so-brief stretch in the second half when BYU went on an 8-0 run, closing the gap to 45-32, but two 3-pointers by Houston jacked its lead back to 19. For those desperately seeking a glimpse at a silver lining, BYU outscored Houston by one point in the second half, but …
But.
The fantasy emanating out of hope that if BYU’s Cougars had been good enough to take their win streak to 10 against an opponent figured by many to be talented enough to challenge for a national championship, that might have meant that that accomplishment, on top of what they had already shown, might have conjured the unimaginable — that BYU is good enough to make the same challenge.
Ummm … no.
Some had thought BYU was the hottest team in the country. If it ever was … well, not anymore. Friday’s outcome substantiated that the Cougars, the ones on the losing end, might be good on some occasions, under certain circumstances, but not Houston good.
No shame in that, but there was at least some shame in the overwhelming way it went down here. You have to wonder whether BYU’s former self-assuredness, the swagger enjoyed and displayed for the better part of six weeks, has been shaken to the extent that much of the progress it had made might have hit the brakes and been slammed into reverse.
Young doesn’t think so: “I’m excited for our group,” he said. “To win nine out of our last 10 and play the way we’ve played gives us a lot of momentum going into the NCAA Tournament.”
Dawson Baker, the single BYU perimeter shooter who hit a decent number of shots, put it like this: “Initially, we were bummed out. We wanted to perform on a stage like this. … But we have to keep the motivation that we’ve had — focus on the next task at hand. … We’ll just turn it into something good for us, [use it to] motivate us, and get back at it.”
He added: “It’s about our character, how we’re going to respond.”
Not much comfort will come to them for trimming the margin of defeat in their first encounter with Houston from 31 points down to 20 in their second. No high-level competitor thinks that way. Especially since it seemed as though the victorious Cougars here toyed with the defeated ones at their own pleasure.
It’ll be up to Young to quickly address his team’s shortcomings now in preparation for the big tournament. BYU might take solace from knowing it won’t run into many teams as athletic and talented as Houston. But embracing that relief isn’t the sole solution to BYU’s struggles. The Cougars will have to rediscover and reconstruct what worked for them and recapture it for whatever, whomever comes next. They’ll have to play, as their coach told them in the aftermath, with more focus, more ferocity.
“It’s a learning experience,” Young said. “… We move on.”
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