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Provo • The BYU Cougars will return to the Bay Area this week, hoping to find the mojo they seemingly left there two weeks ago.
Sure, the Cougars rolled past last-place Loyola Marymount 85-72 on Saturday night at the Marriott Center in front of a nice crowd of 16,912, but they looked nothing like the team that steamrolled Santa Clara and San Francisco last weekend and a lot like the outfit that was upset 67-61 by Pepperdine at home on Thursday.
A 13-point win looks solid until one considers that LMU played without its best player and leading scorer, sophomore guard Evan Payne, and that the Lions, who dropped to 0-5 in West Coast Conference play, refused to go away several times in the second half.
And the Cougars, try as they might, couldn't really put them away.
"Teams come in fighting, no matter what their record is," said BYU's Tyler Haws, who led all scorers with 26 points on 9-for-16 shooting. Chase Fischer added 19; Anson Winder had 15 points and five assists. Kyle Collinsworth again came close to a triple-double with 13 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.
With Skyler Halford adding nine and Jake Toolson three, BYU's guards accounted for all 85 points, which continued a season trend: The Cougars got a combined six rebounds and zero points out of their bigs — starter Luke Worthington and freshmen Isaac Neilson and Corbin Kaufusi — in 40 combined minutes.
"We just know that this league, every game is a dogfight, especially where we are right now, where our margin for error is so slim, so narrow, that we need to be really good in every area of the game that we have an advantage in, because we have a disadvantage in quite a few areas to start," said BYU coach Dave Rose. "… We are down the line a little bit on our options."
So the Cougars will stay in this holding pattern, a four-guard lineup that heavily depends on 3-pointers, Winder's terrific slashes to the basket, Haws' reliability and Collinsworth's versatility until Nate Austin returns from a hamstring injury and Jamal Aytes, possibly, from ankle surgery.
"Those are two things we could look forward to in the future, if something good happens," Rose hinted. "We will see."
BYU (14-5, 4-2 WCC) led 66-49 with 9:46 remaining when Fischer made his fifth and final 3-pointer, and it looked like the visitors, who had battled back from a 16-point deficit in the first half to close within four early in the second half, were done for the night.
But the Lions had another run in them, trimming the deficit to seven just three minutes later on a pair of Matt Hayes 3-pointers and a dunk by Godwin Okonji. The crowd grew uneasy, many having witnessed the second-half meltdown against Pepperdine two nights earlier.
"A lot of guts, a lot of moxie," was LMU coach Mike Dunlap's description of his team's effort. "That was our best game as a unit, as witnessed by 18 assists."
The coach said it was his decision to not play Payne, who wasn't injured. He didn't elaborate. Without Payne's 20-point average on the floor, which BYU learned would happen just before tipoff, Rose said the other Lions' "leash gets a little bit longer" and "trigger a little bit quicker," and it showed.
Five LMU players were in double figures.
"I think the crowd was surprised, because of what our record is, with what went on out there,"
Dunlap said. "It was a heckuva good basketball game, and that includes them. Obviously, they found their mojo from the three."
If not, BYU would have been looking at a second straight embarrassing upset at home. The Cougars made 13 3-pointers on 29 attempts and assisted on 25 of their 28 field goals. They were outrebounded 33-32.
"When you think of our size disadvantage in this game, and the fact that it was a one-rebound game, I think it shows the effort that our guys put in," Rose said.
The Cougars travel to Pacific on Thursday, then play at Saint Mary's on Saturday.
Twitter: @drewjay