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The Cougars are reeling.

How else to describe a basketball team that can't win a West Coast Conference game on the road against the league's seventh-place club?

The Toreros improved to 3-6 in league play, 10-11 overall, with the 77-74 win in front of 2,463 at Jenny Craig Pavilion, snapping a three-game losing skid.

The Cougars (5-4, 15-7) return to Provo licking their wounds, their confidence rattled. If there is such a thing as an unforgivable loss, this came close to it for a team with postseason aspirations.

This will be remembered as the BYU team that couldn't win close games. The Cougars' seven losses are by a combined 32 points. They've won two games that went to the wire: UMass and Stanford. And they almost blew the Stanford game.

"We need to find a way to get home and get things right," coach Dave Rose said after the loss that probably ended BYU's NCAA Tournament hopes. "There's not a lot of things to tell them, other than to say we are disappointed. There's a lot of season, a lot of ball left to play, and a lot of things happen.

So we just have to get home and get to practice on Monday and get better."

Talking about the NCAA Tournament with this team seems wrong, because, frankly, this isn't a good basketball team right now. It's got two really good players — Tyler Haws and Kyle Collinsworth — and a lot of holes in the lineup in other places.

The Cougars go as Chase Fischer goes, and Saturday afternoon the Wake Forest transfer didn't go anywhere. He 3-for-8 from the field, including 0-for-3 from the 3-point line. Fischer just didn't have it today, culminating in a flagrant foul that cost the Cougars possession of the ball and resulted in four game-tying points by USD at the other end.

Against the low-scoring Toreros, the Cougars reverted back to their soft defense, especially inside. Thomas Jacobs, who averages 6.7 points and 5.6 rebounds, and regularly starts, came off the bench to bury the Cougars. He scored 19 points and grabbed 13 rebounds in 25 minutes.

"I think probably just our miscommunication defensively is probably the biggest thing [that hurt BYU], "Rose said. "And our inability to hit shots, too. You go 3 for 15 from three, that's been kind of a recipe for disaster for us. We got to figure out the nights that isn't happening for us how we can still get in there and score."

Rose said Jacobs "just killed us on the offensive boards." The 6-6 transfer from Cal State Northridge had six offensive rebounds and was 7 of 11 from the free-throw line. The Toreros were 20 of 32 from the line, BYU was 15 of 17.

BYU didn't have a timeout left after Jacobs missed a free throw with 10.3 seconds left, but rushed down the court and got as good of a shot as they could expect, anyway. Kyle Collinsworth rolled to his left and got close to the rim, but missed an off-balance shot. He got clobbered after the miss as he went for the rebound by USD's Chris Sarbaugh, but there's not an official on the planet who is going to call a rebound foul in that situation.

The plan was "just for Kyle to go to the basket," said Tyler Haws. "He got a good look. He got all the way to the rim. It just didn't go down."

Haws made a field goal with 15:18 remaining in the game, then went the rest of the way without a basket. He did go 9 of 10 from the line during that stretch, but couldn't get a shot to drop from the field.

""We had our chances," Haws said after getting his 124th start, most in school history. "We were up in the second half — we got up nine and there is no way we should have lost that game."

But they did, and now they are in a bad spot. On the line now is seeding for the conference tournament. A four seed likely means a semifinal matchup with No. 3 Gonzaga, while a three seed is much more palatable.