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Provo • Last season, it was a road loss at Portland and a home loss to Pacific. This season, it was a home loss to Utah Valley and a road loss at San Diego.
Setbacks to teams with rankings below 200 in statistical guru Ken Pomeroy's ratings continue to plague the BYU basketball team, which allowed the 228th-rated Toreros to break open a tight game with a 13-0 run at Jenny Craig Pavilion on Saturday night and take a stunning 88-75 win in front of 2,206 fans.
As a result, the Cougars (13-6, 4-2 WCC) have tumbled to 68th in the rankings at Kenpom.com and are in serious danger of losing their status as a member of the WCC's so-called Big Three. While No. 5 Gonzaga was pounding No. 21 Saint Mary's 79-56 in a battle of league leaders, the Cougars were dropping into a tie for third with Santa Clara, a team they crushed 89-59 on Dec. 29.
Of course, that game was at the Marriott Center, where — notwithstanding the meltdown against UVU — BYU usually plays with effort, poise and composure. The same cannot be said when coach Dave Rose's relatively inexperienced team hits the road. That was true even though at least half of the crowd, maybe more, was cheering for BYU on Saturday night.
"It is pretty simple," Rose said. "The pattern of our group is that we are a pretty good home team, and then we get out on the road and we get rattled. We get rattled where we don't execute the way we need to execute. We gotta grow through it."
The heavily favored Cougars played poorly most of the night, committing 14 turnovers, losing their man defensively time and again and allowing USD 13 second-chance points off seven offensive rebounds while shooting just 41.7 percent on the offensive end.
But the erratic play was magnified down the stretch. Trailing by four after USD's Tyler Williams hit a short jumper, the Cougars got the ball down low to Yoeli Childs. But his tightly defended jump hook was woefully short, and 16 seconds later Cameron Neubauer sank two free throws to help the Toreros begin pulling away.
The Cougars panicked. Elijah Bryant missed a free throw, Eric Mika had a shot blocked by Frank Ryder, and TJ Haws missed a 3-pointer in the span of 20 seconds that doomed the Cougars' comeback hopes. BYU missed 10 of its last 11 shots.
The Toreros, who had lost their previous two home games to Pacific and Santa Clara, sank 11 free throws to seal it, and then got a rub-it-in dunk by Brett Bailey with 23 seconds remaining and the shot clock off that surely won't be forgotten on Feb. 16 in Provo.
"End of game situations are a big thing, and we need to work on that more in practice, and we need to get better at that, because this conference is tough," Haws said after scoring a career-high 27 points on 8-of-18 shooting. "Every game is a battle, and I think games are going to go down to the wire a lot, and we need to be ready."
The pattern could continue this week, as BYU hosts injury decimated Pepperdine (5-13, 1-5) on Thursday before another quick turnaround game Saturday afternoon at Pacific. The Tigers should be licking their chops, much as San Diego was after having lost 91-33 to BYU in Provo last February. The Cougars blasted Pacific 91-62 on Jan. 7, and Rose was even predicting back then it would be a much closer game in Stockton.
"Defensively there are a lot of issues that we have to address," Rose said after watching San Diego shoot 57 percent in the second half. "Everybody just has to kind of realize that we need to be better. We need to figure out how we are going to execute better and defend better away from our building, because right now that's kind of the difference."
Twitter: @drewjay —
Pepperdine at BYU
P Thursday, 7 p.m.
TV • BYUtv