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Slow start dooms Cougars vs. San Diego State |
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JaredLloyd | Saturday, February 24, 2007, 11:52 pm
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Jason Franchuk
DAILY HERALD
SAN DIEGO — BYU officials briefly combed Cox Arena on Saturday to make sure players were headed in the right direction.
A chartered plane awaited the Cougars, who might've become some of the first visitors who yearned to flee this southern California paradise. An 86-74 loss to San Diego State, though, had to be erased from memory ASAP. There weren't many stragglers to the bus.
A six-minute stretch early in the first half built an 18-0 SDSU run, which turned a 4-all score into a 22-4 Aztec lead. As they say at the beach, "wipeout."
"That pretty much killed us," center Trent Plaisted said of the early deficit, which also squashed an eight-game winning streak.
"That" could've meant a lot other things for the 21st-ranked team, which fell to 21-7 (11-3 Mountain West).
Brandon Heath scoring 30 points for the second consecutive game. The Cougars committed 19 turnovers, which also meant 12 SDSU steals. The Aztecs also had a 42-24 margin on points scored inside, which came from all sorts of angles — offensive tip-ins, slashes to the basket. You name it.
But it all boiled down to one theme, which hadn't been seen since says the non-conference days of losing at Boise State and Lamar. During the last eight contests, BYU never trailed by more than six points.
"We just got down too much, too early," said BYU head coach Dave Rose. “We turned the ball over uncharacteristically. We haven’t been in a situation like that for quite some time."
Not that one game should take BYU to the cemetery, counting it out from any real postseason potential.
Sloppy play after the opening tipoff led to a 23-point deficit midway through the first half. A luster of optimism has to be recognized that the Aztecs (20-8, 9-5) had to sweat it out the final minutes.
Rose tried everything to cause change. With about 12 minutes left, four of his regular starters were off the floor. That got them settled down as the subs thrived.
Early, it was about timeouts. Rose yelled at players, he was miffed at some calls made by the three men with whistles. Not usually one to sip during a game, he reached for a bottled water 5:30 into the developing nightmare when he called his second timeout. He was undoubtedly getting hoarse.
BYU trailed 18-4 then, and by his next timeout the Cougars trailed 30-7. The day's biggest lead came on an exemplary moment for SDSU.
A missed BYU shot was batted back to the perimeter. Ben Murdock thought he had the ball, but Heath swooped in at the last second.
Another easy two points — timeout, BYU.
"There were specific things we weren't doing right," Rose said when asked if he had much fresh material during all of those intermissions. "San Diego State was really intense, and for whatever reason, we just weren't in a position to handle it."
Things were worked out in the second half. BYU finally cracked the 15-point barrier on Austin Ainge's 3-point shot at 7:40. It started a string of seven consecutive possessions in which a trey was hoisted. Five were made.
Jonathan Tavernari, a freshman, further engrained his reputation as an outside threat by going 4-for-5 in that spurt and making 5-of-9 overall for 18 points.
Ainge added 17, but lamented his six turnovers (three in each half) and took blame for the loss. His 3-pointer with 55 seconds left cut it to 81-72.
Keena Young added 16 for the Cougars, who play at Air Force on Tuesday.
That's the reason for the private aircraft. Coaches stayed in town because of limited capacity.
Lots of corrections could be analyzed by the time players touch down in Provo, focusing intently on playing a Falcon squad that shockingly lost at last-place TCU a few hours before the Cougars' demise was underway.
BYU has a one-game edge over second-place UNLV. The Falcons, who slipped to third place, are 1 1/2 games behind the Cougars.
SDSU is streaking, having won 7-of-8, including wins against the top three MWC teams by double figures.
Mohamed Abukar had 27 points on 11-of-16 shooting, though he also hit some shots from just inside the 3-point line that make the 6-foot-10 senior virtually impossible to defend. Jerome Habel added 12 points, including a couple of finishes on alley-oop dunks which sent the sellout crowd (12,414) into a frenzy.
His first one — the game’s the opening points — with his back to the basket, set the tone.
"We were so good out of the gate at both ends of the floor," said SDSU coach Steve Fisher. "We made every shot we took, guarded like crazy and gave (BYU) nothing easy."
Except a reason for being happy to leave. An upcoming game at Air Force, where the Falcons have also won 30 consecutive in their home gym, never looked so good.
"What you want to do is make sure one loss isn't the reason you
didn't play well the next time," Rose said.
Players take no offense: The jeers rained down at BYU players from the SDSU student section, behind the east-side basket. But some taunting also came from the Aztecs on the floor. Jerome Habel jawed whether the Cougars listened or not.
Not that they cared.
"It's an emotional game," Ainge said.
SDSU has a tradition of its students hoisting large mugshots of celebrities. There was Britney Spears, Borat and Warren Jeffs. Also, a few students dressed up like missionaries, complete with dress pants, white short-sleeved shirts, bike helmets and backpacks.
Late in the game, Habel scored on a dunk and had to be restrained by a referee for talking at the Cougar bench.
With a minute left, jeers of "over-rated" started from the crowd.
Plaisted shrugged.
"It's still good to be ranked," he said.
Tip-ins: BYU trailed 43-25 at halftime, the largest deficit this season at intermission. It was also the fewest points the Cougars had scored by then. ... BYU shot 44.8 percent, but just 36 percent (9-for-25) in the opening 20 minutes. The Aztecs were at 57.6 for the game (26-for-58). Heath and Abukar combined for 23-of-37 from the field. ... BYU is 20-1 when winning the rebounding battle, after defeating SDSU 30-28 on the glass. ... Sam Burgess sparked BYU with seven points in 21 minutes, including a pair of assists and steals. ... BYU has lost four in a row at SDSU.
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