I made it a point to come out and play hard and try to tip a lot of balls. For me sometimes, if my shot’s not falling early, I let it affect my defense. Tonight I kind of let my defense affect my offense. – Senior guard BYU Chase Fischer
SALT LAKE CITY — Coming off a tough loss at Utah earlier in the week, having dealt with consistency issues this season and playing without suspended freshman guard Nick Emery, BYU was looking for a strong start Saturday against Weber State.
Senior guard Chase Fischer took it upon himself to make sure that happened.
Fischer and the Cougars put together two solid halves of basketball as the Cougars earned a 73-68 victory over the Wildcats at Vivint Arena before a crowd of 15,121.
Fischer finished with a game-high 21 points, including 10 points in the first half after going scoreless in the first half of his two previous games. For the game, he drilled 4 of 8 3-pointers. Just as important, he recorded a career-high four steals.
“I made it a point to come out and play hard and try to tip a lot of balls,” Fischer said. “For me sometimes, if my shot’s not falling early, I let it affect my defense. Tonight I kind of let my defense affect my offense.”
For Fischer, it marked the first time he’s put together back-to-back games scoring at least 20 points. He exploded for 26 points — all in the second half — against Utah.
Forward Kyle Davis scored 15 points, on 7 of 11 shooting from the floor, and grabbed eight rebounds against the Wildcats. Guard Jake Toolson started in place of Emery, who is serving a one-game suspension for drawing a flagrant 2 foul against Utah last Wednesday, and had seven points in 18 minutes.
With the win, BYU (5-2) snapped Weber State’s five-game winning streak.
The trouble for the Cougars Saturday was the Wildcats opened the game on fire, too.
While BYU hit 11 of its first 16 shots from the field, WSU made 15 of its first 19. At halftime, BYU was shooting 18 of 30 (60 percent) and Weber State was 16 of 24 (66.7 percent). The Cougars trailed by seven, 35-28, with a little less than five minutes left in the first half.
“It seemed like in the first half either they made a shot or we turned it over,” said coach Dave Rose. “They weren’t missing shots.”
The Cougars capped the first half with an 11-2 run to take a 39-37 lead into intermission.
BYU increased its lead early in the second half thanks to forced turnovers and red-hot shooting. The Cougars knocked down 8 of their first 10 shots of the second half and went on to take a 12-point lead, their largest of the game, 59-47, with 11:26 remaining.
“We got stops and we got rebounds,” said guard Kyle Collinsworth, who scored 15 points to go along with 10 assists and four rebounds, for his 25th career double-double. “The tempo kind of swung our way and our defense stepped up. There was a spurt where we were turning them over and we ran in transition.”
The Cougars limited the Wildcats to 38 percent shooting in the second half.
BYU struggled at times with Weber State’s top two players, guard Jeremy Senglin and forward Joel Bolomboy. Senglin entered the game shooting 58 percent from 3-point range and he went 4 of 7 from long distance and finished with a team-high 20 points. Bolomboy had a double-double with 12 points and 12 rebounds.
“They have tons of confidence right now,” Collinsworth said. “Guys are shooting 60 percent from the 3-point line. (Defense) was a huge emphasis. We could have done a better job, but we did a good enough job to get the win.”
Down the stretch, the Cougars had to hang on to put away the Wildcats. In the final 1:25, BYU made 5 of 10 free throws. The Cougars led 71-68 with 10.9 seconds remaining when Collinsworth hit a pair from the charity stripe to all but seal the victory.
“This is a really good win for our team,” Rose said. “You take a really hot team, that’s playing really well, then when you consider some of the issues that we’re going through as a team, and to be able to win is big and hopefully we can springboard from this.”
Rose liked his team’s consistency Saturday.
“It was better,” he said. “We still turned the ball over 14 times, but that’s a way better number than the 20 we had a couple of weeks ago. We’ve slowed practice way down and you can see it in our execution in transition.”
“It’s really tough to be consistent because the game’s different every night,” Fischer said. “But it was good for us tonight. I made it a point for myself to be consistent and I think as a team we did, too. We put two solid halves together and got a hard-fought win.”
BYU hosts Utah State Wednesday.
EMAIL: jeffc@deseretnews.com