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BYU discovered Zac Seljaas at its 2015 basketball game at Colorado, coach Dave Rose said several times last week, after the freshman from Bountiful scored 18 points in 22 minutes in the nine-point loss at Coors Events Center.

Is Steven Beo the next Zac Seljaas?

Probably not, but the seldom-used freshman from Washington had some nice moments while playing 21 minutes in Saturday's 79-71 win over the Buffaloes (not the Buffalo, as BYU's P.A. guy called the visiting team for most of the game).

The biggest moment, of course, was when Eric Mika found Beo alone in front of the BYU bench and fed him for a wide-open 3-pointer that Beo drained to tied the score at 58-58 with 9:28 left. Colorado answered with a 3-pointer of its own to regain the lead, but that was the last field goal the Buffs would make until less than a minute remained.

"Well, you schedule these home and homes and you know it is going to be tough going over there," Rose said of the two-game series with Colorado. "You just hope you can make really competitive games out of them, and then win the one at home. The game last year over there was so important for us, because we found Zac Seljaas. That was Zac's breakout game. And we didn't win the game, but we went on to get some great minutes from Zac throughout the year. Maybe the same thing will happen tonight with Steven Beo. But we got the win, and we desperately needed the win."

Beo even played during crunch time as senior point guard LJ Rose watched from the bench. Rose has tried to limit the Houston transfer's minutes as much as he can because he is still having some issues with both feet, but the hunch here is that the coach wanted a better shooter on the floor late to keep CU honest.

"We are having a hard time with some kind of practice issues with all of our guys, because we've got some issues with injuries and we are playing guys too many minutes and we need to find one other guy," Dave Rose said, when asked why Beo got 21 minutes. "We felt like, we had a lot of conversations as a staff, and we felt like we'd give one of the guys a chance, and it was Steven. Steven stood out really well in practice. He's played well. I think that he would have emerged a lot sooner, but he hurt his thumb and he had to sit out a week or so of practice, and that kinda slowed him down and set him back. Some other guys got more chances. I think he proved tonight that there is a lot that he can do to help our team and help our guard line. Especially because we are kinda waiting for Elijah [Bryant]. When Elijah is back and Steve is playing well, that makes us even better. Hopefully we can accomplish quite a few things in this little period right now."

Credit Beo, who was originally going to be a walk on but has since earned a scholarship, for being ready despite having played just 20 minutes all season.

"It felt really good, being out there with the guys, hustling, making plays," Beo said. "I mean, it was a big win, and it was really fun to be out there with them. … I think we all just go into every game wanting to win. I don't think any of us go in thinking about how much we will play. We are going in with the one purpose, to win. I got the opportunity and it feels great. … I was just doing what the coaches told us. We had this defensive mindset. Every guy is going out there and giving it their all. Coach said once we find that group that can win us the game, we are going to stick with it. I guess he thought I was part of that group tonight."

At outlined in this story, the Cougars don't play again until Saturday against Illinois in the State Farm Chicago Legends event at United Center. The Illini are hot, having improved to 8-3 with a 92-73 win over Central Michigan on Saturday. They've won their last four games after falling 72-61 to No. 25 Florida State in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Nov. 25.