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BYU snaps Air Force home dominance at 30 |
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JaredLloyd | Tuesday, February 27, 2007, 11:58 pm
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Jason Franchuk
DAILY HERALD
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Oh, they looked ugly. A couple of those free throws that clanked all season did so again.
Only this time Trent Plaisted got them to carom off the hoop and still go through it — breaks he hasn’t gotten all season. And that, in part, did in the Falcons, 62-58, on Tuesday in an outcome that clinched for BYU at least a share of the Mountain West Conference title and also shored up the top seed heading into next week’s Mountain West Conference tournament.
“It wasn’t pretty,” Plaisted, a sophomore center, said of his bricks-turned-makes that helped to seal the important win. “But screw it, they went in.”
By putting the screws to the Falcons, so to speak, BYU (22-7 overall, 12-3 MWC) beat so many odds that it would almost seem more fitting if it skipped Saturday’s game against Utah and went straight to Las Vegas for the conference tournament.
After 30 consecutive wins at home, Air Force (23-7, 10-6) finally lost. Now BYU has the longest active Division I winning streak alone.
And that was just the start of what an important night at Clune Arena meant to the visitors:
— A chance on senior day to go for No. 31 in a row at the Marriott Center and get a prized sweep of the Utes. And a win ensures an outright league title, which the Cougars haven’t done since the 1987-88 season.
— Top seed in the conference tournament. Coach Dave Rose quipped afterward that the one downside to that is now the team must go to Vegas on Tuesday, so it can watch the play-in game between the league’s Nos. 8 and 9 seeded teams for its own first-round game Thursday.
— No doubt this win will have an impact in BYU’s NCAA tournament seeding, and most likely return it to the Top 25 landscape.
“To beat a Top 25 team on their home court in late February ... I think that is very good for our postseason (aspirations),” Rose said.
It was, as much as anything, a tasty slice of payback for three previously horrendous visits to this cozy arena that has become deafening loud and active for its team’s success during that number of years.
What this win meant to the future is priceless, but it also had cherished value to the past. Players jubilantly ran off the floor, giving a little good-natured school-pride gesturing to the Falcon student section that was so abrasive for 40 minutes (to be fair, BYU players downplayed San Diego State’s similar antics last Saturday, so there’s no hypocrisy — just heat-of-the-moment stuff).
“Wow, I’ve been embarrassed in this arena a lot of times,” said senior guard Austin Ainge, who led BYU with 14 points, and had a key defensive stop late. “I’ve had this game circled on my calendar for a long time.”
As the feisty crowd stayed into this special senior class’ last home game, the players it cheered for faded away. Air Force struggled to get home from TCU after Saturday’s shocking loss. Weather and plane malfunctions didn’t let them arrive until about 4 p.m. Monday. Coach Jeff Bzdelik wouldn’t make excuses, but his team’s legs sure looked shaky at times.
That, combined with solid BYU defense, hurt the home team big time.
Put it this way: BYU scored just six points in the final 5:05. The Falcons, after taking a 58-56 lead with 4:50 left on Jacob Burtschi’s 3-pointer, did not score again. They missed a free throw, committed a turnover, bricked a jumpshot and most surprisingly, clanked all four 3-pointers down the stretch.
Those long-range shots were way-off ugly, too. Not typical Air Force, the 25th-ranked team which fell to 23-7 (10-6 in league). But as Rose said, “Every team has a personality and they stayed within theirs” by continuing to hoist bombs that have been known to put away a team or two.
The Cougars stayed in character, too, by never giving in. Even in the most trying of times, like last Saturday’s struggles at San Diego State, there has always been a part of this team that hasn’t quit. Big deficits don’t make ’em cower.
Tenacity paid off the final 13 minutes, after Burtschi (game-high 15 points with teammate Tim Anderson) nailed a 3 for an 11-point lead, 49-38.
Jimmy Balderson answered two possessions later, and the slow drain of Air Force’s margin was on.
“Our guys were really tough,” Rose said.
BYU had balanced scoring. Ainge hit all four first-half 3-point
attempts, and did little things that made up for six turnovers. Keena Young added 12 points, including the pivotal offensive rebound off Balderson’s missed free throw with 1:01 left.
Later, Ainge helped BYU maintain a two-point lead by forcing Burtschi into a turnover on the offensive baseline at 19 seconds left. Talk about resiliency. He had been called for a five-second violation while inbounding the ball 10 seconds earlier.
You want the two most significant moments of a monumental night, though? There were a bunch of critical moments, which changed the ebb and flow between two of the MWC’s top teams.
But Balderson’s 3 to open the game’s scoring was demonstrative, if only because the Cougars have really struggled to score early the past few seasons at the academy. BYU’s biggest lead was 13-8, which at least showed the Cougars were going to give themselves a chance for a while — uncharted terrain for these guys at Clune.
That other moment belonged to Plaisted. With 9:11 left, BYU trailing by three points, he sank a couple of free throws. Who knows what happens if the Falcon lead could’ve quickly stretched to five or six points, which Air Force has been known to do at home, if the 48 percent charity shooter clanked a couple? He drained a couple more with 2:36 for a 60-58 lead.
BYU (24-for-47 from the field) made just enough shots, and more importantly kept the Falcons (20-for-44) from doing the same.
“Defensively we did a good job,” Rose said. “We did our thing.”
Between questions, as players walked down the hallway to their bus, Rose could hardly contain a smile.
“This is a very big win for us,” he said. “For our program, for our coaching staff for the players. And ...”
He sat on that thought, let it sink in for a second. He didn’t need to finish.
By beating the odds, and a very good team, his team did finished it for him.
Jason Franchuk can be reached at
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