SAN FRANCISCO — For the BYU basketball team, it was the worst of halves, it was nearly the best of halves.
Actually, it was pretty much the same old story for the Cougars now 10 games into this season: struggles in the first half, followed by solid play the second half. Only Monday night, the story had a much different ending — and the Cougars are having a Dickens of a time trying to figure out how to fix it.
After a half-dozen games of turning first-half failings into second-half successes, BYU found a 20-point first-half deficit to be too much against the University of San Francisco, losing 84-72 to the host Dons.
The Cougars cut the margin to just three points several times in the second and four points in the final minutes. But they couldn't overcome USF guard Shamell Stallworth's career night of 37 points on 75-percent shooting from the floor.
USF improved to 3-6, while BYU dropped to 8-2 going into a brief Christmas break.
Relying on second-half rallies finally caught up with coach Steve Cleveland's team.
"When you keep winning, what happens is that you don't sense the urgency of it, and maybe this taste in their mouths and how they feel right now might wake them up to the fact that it requires 40 minutes," Cleveland said. "Sometimes the best way to learn a lesson, unfortunately, is to lose a game rather than continue to win."
The magnitude of the Dons' upset over the Cougars was underscored by two facts — that BYU was ranked No. 1 in several national RPI rankings this week and USF in the 300s, and that the Dons blitzed the Cougars for 46 first-half points. Compare that with the 47 points USF managed in the entire game in a 70-47 loss earlier this month to UC Santa Barbara, the team that BYU dispatched by 13 points last weekend in the Marriott Center.
Junior center Rafael Araujo posted his best numbers as a Cougar, with 24 points, eight offensive rebounds, 17 total boards, three steals and a block against USF. Travis Hansen added 13 points and Kevin Woodberry 10.
But to say the Cougars struggled shooting is an understatement — just 30 percent for the first half and 23-of-63 for 36.5 percent for the game — the same percentage BYU had held opponents at in nine previous games. Hansen connected on 4-of-13 from the floor, Woodberry 3-of-10 and Mark Bigelow 1-of-9 — plus the team was 23-of-35 from the line.
Meanwhile, USF shot a blistering 61 percent in the first half and 51 for the game.
BYU led briefly at 5-2 before the Dons unleashed a 19-2 surge over the next seven-plus minutes. Stallworth canned two 3-pointers and another jumper en route to a 21-6 lead, with USF adding to the advantage and upping the margin to 20 points before settling for a 46-27 score at intermission.
The Cougars opened the second half with more energy and urgency, holding the Dons to just one point — a free throw coming on a Hansen technical — through the first 6:45.
Even with Hansen on the bench with foul trouble, the Cougars used a 12-1 run through the first seven minutes of the second half and eventual 21-5 surge — thanks in part to Woodberry's three 3s — to pull within 51-48 with 11:12 remaining.
Still down by three at 55-52, Jared Jensen missed two free throws, and a 13-point binge by Stallworth helped the Dons to bump their lead back to double digits.
BYU drew to within four twice in the final two minutes, with an Araujo banker making it 76-72 with 48 seconds left. BYU picked off a backcourt pass but Woodberry missed an open drive from a Hansen pass, and Stallworth finished off his 27-point second half with six free throws and a resounding alley-oop jam in the closing seconds.
NOTES: Attendance at the 5,300-seat War Memorial Gymnasium was 3,979, with about a 50-50 split between BYU and USF fans . . . "He never said a thing," said Cleveland of Hansen's technical. "He (the referee) said he didn't like his expression on his face — it's a mystery to me." . . . USF coach Philip Mathews recruited Cleveland as a player to UC Irvine when the former was an assistant coach there . . . BYU outrebounded USF 40-38, but most of the Cougars' 17 offensive rebounds went for naught with just 13 second-chance points . . . Next up for BYU: a 7 p.m. home game Saturday against Southern Utah . . . Stallworth was 12-of-16 from the floor, 3-of-4 on 3s and 10-of-11 from the line; his seven rebounds were a team-high, too . . . The only other Don in double-figure scoring was reserve John Cox with 11 points and senior forward Darrell Tucker with 10.
E-mail: taylor@desnews.com