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A lot of the pre-game talk before the Cougars tipped off with San Francisco on Thursday night was about close games, and how BYU was struggling to win them. After all, BYU fell 77-74 to San Diego last week.

Nobody imagined that the Dons, who were blown out 99-68 by BYU in San Francisco on Jan. 3, would give the Cougars much of a game.

Naturally, USF gave BYU all it wanted and then some before falling 78-74 in front of 12,452 at the Marriott Center.

"It seems like we've had a few of these games where it has gone the other way," Tyler Haws said after scoring 28 points to get within two points of tying Danny Ainge for No. 2 on the school's career scoring list. "It is nice when we're not shooting the ball well to get a grind-it-out win like that. We kept fighting all the way to the end."

San Francisco coach Rex Walters received a technical foul in the first half — from my vantage point, it appeared that Walters screamed an expletive at referee Michael Goldstein, part of an alliterative phrase that ended with the word foul.

After the game, Walters was still unhappy with the way the game was officiated. Here is one comment that was distributed by BYU's sports information staff:

"We did some good things defensively to try to keep them off balance," Walters said. "I thought we did a good job of that. I thought they hurt us on the glass. I thought they got to the free-throw line an awful lot. Honestly, that hurt us. Some might think there might be some discrepancies in how the game was called. I haven't watched the tape. I will have to watch the tape to see."

San Francisco was whistled for 28 fouls, including three in the final minute when it was trying to foul. BYU was assessed 22 fouls.

The Dons shot 24 free throws (making 15), the Cougars 33 (making 23). Eight of BYU's free-throws were attempted in the final minute and 15 seconds.

The Cougars' 3-point shooting woes continued five days after they went 3-for-15 from beyond the arc at San Diego. They were 3 for 20 from long range, but won because they forced 17 USF turnovers and committed just eight themselves.

The Cougars hoisted up nine more field goal attempts and nine more free-throw attempts than the Dons.

"I thought we played with a lot of urgency and emotion in a game that was really tough to play that way because we didn't have a lot of things go right for us," said BYU coach Dave Rose. "We were good defensively. We turned them over quite a few times, which led to nine or 10 more shots, which we needed because we had a hard time getting shots to fall for us, especially 3-pointers. … We found another way to win. We will take it and move on."

Toward the end of the game, Kyle Collinsworth fell hard on his hip after trying to grab a rebound that was tipped in. Official scorers credited USF's Matt Christiansen with the basket. Rose seemed to think a Cougar accidentally knocked it in.

Rose said Collinsworth is "really sore" after the fall and will be evaluated on Friday. Collinsworth had a rather pedestrian night, by his standards, with eight points, six rebounds and six assists.

Anson Winder had a decent game with 11 points, four rebounds and two steals and was the only Cougar besides Haws in double figures. Of course, Winder made the two big free-throws with 3.2 seconds left to seal it, and also had a big post-up layup with 36 seconds left that gave BYU a 74-70 lead.

"I think it was all pretty precarious in the second half," Rose said. "You never got over that seven-point lead and we had good looks three or four times and missed them all. We found other ways to do it and that's a good thing."