BYU won’t be ‘hitting each other’ in the locker room anymore, but Cougars still want to be tough in March

Trailing by 17 points at halftime, things looked tough for the BYU Cougars against TCU over the weekend.

Turns out, the Cougars were even tougher.

“That was actually crazy. We’ve never done anything like that before,” big man Fousseyni Traore said of the team’s halftime conversation. “After coach talked, he said, ‘Let’s put all the chairs away and let’s start hitting each other.’ That’s what we did. After we did that, everybody could feel that it was time for business and it was time to go and get it done.”

It apparently worked, spurring the Cougars to an 87-75 victory.

“Nice, Coach,” Traore said as he turned to Mark Pope after the game. “We’ve got to start doing that more.”

“We cannot do that again,” Pope said through laughter, “because you almost broke my shoulder.”

But maybe the Cougars can continue to show a different kind of toughness as they enter March.

“Sometimes we mistake toughness for yelling, screaming, fouling, grabbing and punching,” Pope said. “But real toughness is the ability to focus when everything around you is going sideways and you don’t even feel right yourself. These guys were brilliant with their toughness.”

The Cougars stayed level at No. 20 in Monday’s Associated Press men’s basketball poll in the wake of wins over now-No. 14 Kansas and TCU, but Pope’s squad has bigger ambitions.

BYU is No. 16 in the KenPom rankings and No. 12 in the NCAA’s NET. The Cougars are currently projected anywhere from a 4-6 seed in the NCAA Tournament, with games against No. 8 Iowa State and Oklahoma State still left on the regular season schedule to help bolster their resume.

“We are learning. They are getting more confident and this is the time in the season when toughness matters.”

Utah State

The Aggies stayed level at No. 22 in Monday’s poll after beating Air Force 72-60 on Friday night.

“Gutsy win by our guys,” head coach Danny Sprinkle said. “Thank God for our crowd, especially our student section. That carries you and we needed every bit of it. They were absolutely phenomenal like they always are.”

Utah

After losing at home to Washington, 62-47, the Utes dropped four spots in the women’s basketball poll Monday. They’ll start the Pac-12 tournament in a 6-11 matchup against Arizona State on Wednesday night in Las Vegas.