PROVO — The BYU Cougars put a nice solid game together at home to break a pair of streaks. The women put a halt to their own two-game losing streak and yanked the plug on Utah's five-game winning streak with a 54-37 victory over the Utes.

The Cougar victory put BYU alone in second place in the Mountain West Conference. With only one game left in the regular season the Cougars now stand at 19-8 overall and 10-5 in the conference. Utah is 18-10 overall and 9-6 in the MWC. The win marks the first time the Cougars have swept the Utes in a season since the 2001-2002 season.

"I'm glad they came out and played their game and didn't let other distractions bother them. It was a great effort by our team," said BYU coach Jeff Judkins.

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The Cougars jumped out early to a 13-0 lead and set the tone for the rest of the contest. They were also able to hold the Utes to 14 points in the first half with a solid defensive effort.

But the second half wasn't quite as kind to BYU as the Utes put a nice run of their own together to chop what the Cougars had once built up to an 18 point lead right back down to four points with a solid run by Taryn Wicijowski, who finished with 12 points and seven rebounds.

A pair of treys by Mindy Bonham and Haley Hall stopped the Utah momentum and turned things around for BYU, starting them on a 14-3 run that ultimately put the game out of reach.

"We jumped on them early, then they got in there and ran their stuff, and if we didn't get a big basket, they might have won it," said Judkins.

Utah coach Elaine Elliott agreed, adding, "This year I think BYU played their best ball in the games they played against us,"

"I don't think we ever gave up. At times we got down, but we fought back, and I think we finished well," said Utah forward Kalee Whipple, who finished with 15 points and seven rebounds.

The Cougars shot well from beyond the arc, nailing 10-of-25 from long distance, including three each for Jazmine Foreman and Hall and Alexis Kaufusi's first ever trey.

The rest of the shooting performance was down for both teams as the Cougars only shot 35.2 percent from the field, and Utah managed a mere 27.9 percent from the field and 15.4 percent from beyond the arc.

"I thought our defensive effort was awesome tonight. When we have Jazmine and Haley up there in the press, it lets me work in the back," said Bonham, who picked off a career-high six steals.

Foreman was just excited to have defeated the Utes not once, but twice this season.

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"We've had a rough couple of years with Utah, so we were ready to step up. We individually took care of what we needed to and played good one on one defense. We were just confident, and we weren't hesitating," Foreman noted.

Foreman finished with 11 points for the Cougars, Hall added 13 points and six rebounds, Bonham scored 13 in addition to the steals. Kristen Riley knocked in seven points and grabbed seven boards.

Though Utah's Janita Badon didn't score, she did pick up seven rebounds and four assists for the Utes.

e-mail: jolsen@desnews.com

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