After that stunning 31-point loss at Houston three days ago, BYU got the first 32 minutes against visiting Texas Tech right on Tuesday night in front of 17,307 at the Marriott Center.
It was the final eight minutes, and the play of a blossoming superstar by the name of Darrion Williams, that cost the Cougars dearly.
Far more accustomed to close games than the Cougars, and with a legitimate go-to guy that BYU coach Kevin Young has yet to find on his own squad, the Red Raiders out-executed the home team down the stretch and rolled away with a 72-67 Big 12 breakthrough win.
“Disappointed” is the first word Young said in his postgame address to the media after suffering his first loss as BYU’s coach at the Marriott Center.
BYU (10-4, 1-2) played better than it did Saturday at No. 11 Houston, but it wasn’t enough against a Texas Tech team (11-3, 2-1) that completed a road sweep of the Utah schools in the Big 12, having walloped Utah 93-65 at the Huntsman Center last Saturday.
“What a remarkable environment this is to play a college basketball game in,” said Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland. “I thought the student section and just the energy in the building was tremendous.”
Of course, his team won despite having an off shooting night, by its standards. But thanks to 22 points from Elijah Hawkins, 16 from Chance McMillian and 18 from Williams, the Red Raiders had enough in the tank to pull off the mild upset.
“I thought we came up with timely plays,” McCasland said.
Boy, he wasn’t kidding.
The Cougars took a 53-48 lead with 8:20 remaining on Egor Demin’s half-dunk, then watched Hawkins make a 3-pointer and McMillian hit back-to-back triples to give Texas Tech a lead it would not relinquish.
Williams then took over, scoring eight points in the final six minutes to ice it.
“Our late-game defensive execution was bad. We wanted to get the ball out of Williams’ hands. We let him play one-on-one too much,” Young said.
“They make it hard because they have a lot of shooting around him and he is a heckuva ball player. We did not execute our scheme to get the ball out of his hands, and he made us pay.”
Defensive specialist Mawot Mag made a putback off an offensive rebound with 1:07 left to cut Tech’s lead to 67-64, but Williams scored over Mag with 46 seconds left, and drew a foul.
Williams missed the free throw, but BYU didn’t box out and the Red Raiders made two more free throws during the possession, one after getting a second chance because of a lane violation.
That was part of BYU’s poor execution down the stretch. The Cougars played the last few minutes, when the game was on the line, like they have never been there before.
“Every team is going to have a good player that you gotta get the ball out of their hands in some form or fashion,” Young said. “Hopefully this happened early in league play where we got a close one like this. My hope is that our young guys and veterans alike kinda come together and fix it moving forward.”
When asked if he’s still searching for his go-to guy, Young nodded and said, “I think that is fair.”
Asked to name some candidates, he talked about two bench players, Fousseyni Traore and Dawson Baker. Traore led BYU with 14 points, while Demin added 12 but had another miserable shooting night.
Actually, almost all of the Cougars shot the ball poorly — from the free-throw line (12 of 21) and the 3-point line (5 of 23).
Demin missed his first four 3-point attempts, extending his streak of missed treys to 21, which dates back to two minutes remaining in regulation in the Ole Miss game on Thanksgiving.
He made his last attempt as the buzzer sounded, but even that shot bounced around the rim a couple times before falling.
“Egor is still trying to figure out where his spots are to best score the basketball,” Young said. “That is one thing that is tough with the group we have. We don’t have a ton of break-you-off-the-dribble guys.
“And in close games, you need that.”
Texas Tech, which came in as the No. 1 shooting team in the country in terms of offensive efficiency, did not have a great shooting night, either. The Red Raiders were 44.8% from the floor, six percentage points lower than their average.
But down the stretch, the shots fell, and so did the free throws.
“I think we just were a little disorganized, turned the ball over a little bit and they got out in transition and we didn’t get matched up. Credit to them, they hit a lot of shots late,” said BYU guard Dallin Hall.
““Yeah, we just gotta take care of the ball, get matched up, get back in transition and execute the defensive game plan. For 70% of the game we did a good job. We were a little disorganized towards the end.”
Really, the Cougars had a chance to run away with it in the first half, but could never shake the team that came in with a No. 21 next to its name in the NET rankings, and No. 14 in KenPom.com.
BYU got an improbable 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer from seldom-used reserve Trey Stewart to take a 34-32 lead at the break after a sluggish first half offensively from both teams.
Poor free-throw shooting — 6 of 12 — in the first half also kept the Cougars from stretching the lead. Nine Cougars scored in the first half, as Young searched for combinations that would work after trying to get Demin involved early.
Young ran a play for the freshman on BYU’s first possession, and got him to the free-throw line.
BYU enjoyed a 22-10 advantage in points in the paint in the first half, but that dried up in the second half as it missed some point-blank shots at the rim.
“We have not been in a lot of close games. We have to be able to learn from this quickly and be able to do things we didn’t do to close it out,” Young said.
BYU is at TCU on Saturday, while Texas Tech hosts No. 3 Iowa State in Lubbock.
