SAN DIEGO — As the final seconds ticked off the clock, BYU guard Kyle Collinsworth drove to the basket, looking to tie the game against San Diego and potentially force overtime.
But Collinsworth, perhaps anticipating contact, missed a layup with three seconds left, and the Toreros upset the Cougars, 77-74, before a crowd of 2,463 at Jenny Craig Pavilion Saturday afternoon.
On that sequence, the Cougars wanted “Kyle to go to the basket,” said guard Tyler Haws, who finished with a game-high 20 points. “He got a look, he got all the way to the rim. It just didn’t go down.”
The way BYU sees it, the outcome never should have come down to that last field goal attempt. The Cougars squandered a nine-point second-half lead.
“They just played harder than us,” Haws said of USD (10-11, 3-6). “This one hurts because we knew we needed that game. We should have won. They just wanted it more.”
It marked BYU’s second-consecutive West Coast Conference loss, and the setback was another blow to the Cougars’ NCAA tournament hopes.
BYU (15-7, 5-4) made just 3 of 15 3-pointers, including 0 of 6 in the second half.
“Three of 15 from 3, that’s kind of a recipe for disaster for us,” said coach Dave Rose. “We’ve got to figure out the nights that’s not happening for us how we can still get to the rim and score.”
“We had our chances,” Haws said. “We were up in the second half, we got up nine. There’s no way we should have lost that game.”
With 3-pointers not falling, the Cougars tried to drive inside, with little success.
“Credit to San Diego. They scouted us well,” said guard Anson Winder. “They knew most of our tendencies. They knew who was driving most of the time and when we like to drive. They collapse a lot. Usually when we’re not making (3-pointers) we can get to the rim. We had a hard time doing that as well tonight.”
USD star guard Johnny Dee knocked down four 3-pointers while Thomas Jacobs, who entered the game averaging 6.7 points and 5.6 rebounds, finished with a double-double — 19 points and 13 rebounds, including six offensive rebounds.
“(Jacobs) just killed us on the offensive boards,” said Rose. “Defensively, we had a good plan. There’s so many times when we had a miscommunication and they ended up with shots right at the basket, which allowed them to stay close and stay enthused. Johnny Dee had a night where he was good. We were right on him a couple of times and hit shots.”
BYU led 50-41 with 13:41 remaining in the game after a jumper by Dalton Nixon, and it appeared the Cougars were cruising.
However, at that point USD coach Bill Grier called a 30-second timeout. The Toreros got the ball into the hands of Dee, who missed a 3-pointer. But Brandon Perry grabbed the offensive rebound for the Toreros, and Dee redeemed himself with a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 50-44.
After USD sliced it to 52-50, the Cougars pushed it back to 57-50. But the Toreros, thanks to another Dee 3-pointer, went on a 17-4 run to go up 71-64 with 1:50 remaining.
During that key stretch, a flagrant-1 foul on BYU’s Chase Fischer seemed to help swing the momentum in San Diego’s favor.
“It hurt because we gave them two points, then it gave them the ball back,” Winder said. “We had spurts where we were just giving them points. We can’t let that happen.”
BYU went a little more than five minutes without a field goal before Collinsworth’s putback with 35 seconds remaining.
USD knocked down 12 of its final 15 free throws, including clutch attempts in the final minutes, that helped spell the difference. Prior to that, the Toreros made just 8 of 17 shots from the charity stripe.
Jacobs missed the front end of a one-and-one with 10.8 seconds left to make the score 76-74 for San Diego. Rose drew up a play that had Collinsworth driving to the basket to force overtime.
“We got in a really bad spot,” said Rose. “The guys battled through it and we got a good shot to tie it.”
But the shot didn't go down.
BYU hosts San Francisco Thursday (9 p.m. MST, ESPNU).