BYU Basketball: Takeaways from the first road win of the year…finally

BYU Basketball blew an early 21 point lead, but held on to beat Pacific in the WCC opener, their first road win of the year.

It wasn’t pretty, but BYU Basketball finally has a road win.

The Cougars built an early 21 point lead, then saw it completely vanish in the second half, but still held on to beat Pacific 90-87 on Thursday night.

BYU coupled a hot shooting start and decent defense to build their early lead, then the defense crumbled in the second half, allowing the Tigers to score 49 points after the break.

Here are the biggest takeaways from the game:

Shifting Starters

Head coach Dave Rose switched up the starting lineup, with decent results. McKay Cannon and Luke Worthington were in, Jashire Hardnett and Zac Seljaas were out.

Cannon played well, especially on defense, and added 7 points. Worthington provided a needed big body and managed to score 8 points on hustle plays.

Both Hardnett and Seljaas played well in their new roles. Hardnett scored 17 points, nearly all in the second half, and Seljaas hit both of his shots for five points.

Hot Start

For once it was the Cougars jumping out with a hot start, hitting 10 of their first 11 shots, and 7 of their first 13 from distance. They raced out to a 21 point lead, then cooled off considerably and slowly let Pacific whittle that lead down.

Hitting Threes

The Cougars cooled off after that hot start, but still went 11-25 from distance (44%). It’s one of their best shooting performances from beyond the arc this season.

Pacific only hit one of their six three-point attempts before the half, but nailed five of their seven after the break, finishing with a better percentage than BYU (46.2%).

Foul Trouble

Pacific takes a page out of the Houston Rockets’ playbook, driving into the lane and initiating contact to draw fouls. BYU played right into that, and sent one of the nation’s best free throw shooting teams to the line way too often.

WCC refs have never met a whistle they didn’t want to blow incessantly, and the game turned into a back-and-forth march to the line.

Pacific drew 31 fouls and hit 30 of their 37 free throws (83.3%). BYU wasn’t far behind, drawing 28 fouls but only hitting 21 of their 34 attempts (61.8%). They missed a quite a few big free throws down the stretch that nearly cost them the game.

Childs Distance

Just because Yoeli Childs can hit three-pointers doesn’t mean that he should sit at the three-point line and jack them up early in possessions…

Hot Haws

TJ Haws carried the team on Thursday night, scoring 24 points on an efficient 50% shooting from both the field and from distance.

His biggest shot, though, came right after Childs fouled out late in the game. Haws hit a deep three-pointer to give BYU the lead back and settle the team down.

Freshman Phenom

Pacific’s Ajare Sanni will give BYU fits for the next few years. He’ll be one of the frontrunners for WCC Freshman of the Year, and his hot shooting right after halftime helped the Tigers erase BYU’s lead. The young guard hit three big three-pointers within just a few minutes to eat into the deficit.

Perhaps his only real mistake came when he missed one of three free throws in the final minute after drawing a phantom foul on Nick Emery. Hitting all three would have tied the game, but the miss allowed BYU to keep the lead and change the tenor of the final possessions.

Learn from Sloan

Dave Rose needs to take a page from former Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan’s playbook. The former NBA coach knew when to go after the refs and draw a technical.

When Sloan did it, it accomplished two things. First it put the refs on notice that he thought their calls were ridiculous, but more importantly it was a way to stand up for his players, and it often spurred them into playing better.

The only time in recent years that Rose has done this came against Stanford in the NIT last year, and after that technical the Cougars made a furious run in the final minutes to nearly knock off the Cardinal.

Maybe it’s time we saw that happen a little more often.