BYU Basketball: Egor Demin turned a corner against Colorado

BYU's NBA-bound guard, Egor Demin, has met plenty of criticism during the first half of his freshman season.

That's not to suggest Egor's lottery potential has been exposed as fraudulent--to the contrary, he's displayed raw brilliance in his spotlight under the Marriott Center's luminescence.

His playmaking talent is pure artistry. A swipe of color here and open in the corner is a 3-point shooter. A healthy splash of vibrancy through the middle, and up flies an acrobat primed to throw one through the ring. A NASA-grade supercomputer confined within his skull and the pinpoint accuracy of an archer at his fingertips. Demin is highly capable of lifting his teammates to an elite tier of play.

But here's the drawback. Though he looked dominant against lesser teams, stiffer opposition like Providence and Ole Miss exposed some key flaws in the Moscow natives' game. Sorry, but no one cares that you defeated Pandora when your grave is at the bottom of Hades' monstrous footprint.

Most glaring were his shooting deficiencies. Since Thanksgiving, Egor has shot a tragic 5-for-41 (12.2%) from beyond the 3-point arc--a shocking fall from the 13-for-21 (61.9%) rate he connected in the games prior. He hasn't fared much better among forests of paint defenders inside, either, shooting below 50% from the field as a whole in every game since the Rady Children's Invitational.

That was, until he found something on the road against Big 12 foe Colorado.

It wasn't a scoring explosion, and his night probably didn't leap off the scoresheet at a glance. In fact, Egor had been nearly invisible during the whole first half of this contest. But when the second half began, he locked into a confidence unseen since the likes of Liam Neeson in Taken. The look in Egor's eyes relayed a message pointed and certain: he will find you and he will kill you.

Egor would dish out 7 dimes in the second half of this contest, adding plenty of film to his draft night highlight reel including this sweet rec-league style drop-off to Richie Saunders.

"I'm so glad I hit that [shot], man," Saunders exhaled during the postgame press conference. He completed the highlight just as the ultimate teammate would.

Soaring through the perimeter defense and flicking passes to open shooters the instant their defenders collapsed inside, Demin was playing with a renewed confidence unseen since suffering an ankle injury against Providence.

The ankle looked better than ever when Egor elevated for a reverse slam.

Basketball is a momentum game, and hooping inertia is not easily cast aside. The 6-foot-9 point guard shook his trajectory by channeling Blink-182--he was doing all the small things to reclaim that special something within his toolbox.

Mattresses were not the only items getting stolen in Boulder on that night; Egor Demin nabbed four takeaways and 2 blocks to pair with his stat line of 8 points, 7 assists, and 2 rebounds.

Was BYU's win over Colorado thanks solely to a Demin resurgence? No, and suggesting that this was an all-world performance from start to finish wouldn't be entirely honest. But considering the shaky stretch the Cougars' star guard had faced to this point in the season, Demin is back on track.

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