Something strange happened during BYU Basketball's road loss to TCU on Saturday.
As the Cougars fell behind the Horned Frogs in Fort Worth, head coach Kevin Young scanned his bench for a spark. He searched for an unforeseen solution in a game quickly veering toward BYU's third straight defeat.
Egor Demin couldn't get it going. Trevin Knell was busy bricklaying. Richie Saunders... was cooking up a dish en flambe, if we're being completely honest. Good on Richie. But every venture into the Cougars' depth seemed to only spit out another meager 5-point effort in 20+ minutes of play.
Seriously, Mag, Traore, Hall, and Baker all averaged over 20 minutes of floor time, yet averaged 5 points altogether (Fouss being the 6-point feasting outlier). Meanwhile, Kanon Catchings, BYU's freshman wing took an unexpected vacation from the starting lineup to the back of the bench.
Kanon Catchings totaled 9 minutes of playing time against Texas Christian, his lowest total of the entire season by 10 minutes. That there is a discrepancy. An anomoly. An outlying statistic that raises more questions than it leaves answers. Kanon Catchings, one of the best athletes on BYU's roster and long-range threat, watched his team fall from the sidelines.
Brutal.
In Kanon's 9 minutes, he scored 3 points, reeled in 2 rebounds, and snagged a steal before his informal banishment to the bench. The reasoning? I'd venture his sudden sabbatical was thanks to his 3 giveaways which would remain the second-highest total of any Cougar in half the time. Not a resume-boosting number.
"We had a couple costly turnovers that really hurt us," Young said in his postgame remarks. "And I thought that was the story of the game.”
Simply stated, the Cougars' head coach attributes this loss to turnovers--especially in tightly contested games like this. Catchings hasn't been turnover-prone in the slightest over the course of the season, with 3 matching his year's high he built against Ole Miss in November.
Kanon coughed it up, and the doctor put him on bed rest. He'll need to find the cure before Tuesday's battle with Oklahoma State if he wants to see the floor. I'm confident he can.