PORTLAND, Ore. — The chase for BYU's all-time scoring supremacy will soon be over.
It is anticipated that sometime during the first half against Portland Thursday (8 p.m. MST, Root Sports) at the Chiles Center, BYU senior guard Tyler Haws will surpass Jimmer Fredette as the school’s career scoring leader.
Haws (2,593) needs just seven points to eclipse Fredette (2,599) and make history.
Ironically, the Chiles Center is the same venue where Haws scored his single-game career-high of 48 points in a triple-overtime loss one year ago to the Pilots.
“I love that gym. It’s a fun place to play,” Haws said of the Chiles Center. “It’s a shooter’s gym.”
While Haws said it doesn’t matter to him how he breaks the record — on a free throw, a mid-range jumper or a 3-pointer — coach Dave Rose is hoping it happens early in the game.
“If you look over the last couple of years, Ty is a guy you can count on early and late and all the way through,” Rose said. “Hopefully we can get some baskets for him early in the game.”
Haws doesn't look at his prolific scoring as chasing Jimmer's record. He's simply trying to help his team win and finish strong down the stretch. The chase hasn’t necessarily been a distraction for Haws, but he can’t escape talk about it.
“It will be good to have it behind me, for sure,” Haws said. “I hear about it a lot. I’m trying to make as many plays as I can before this is over and just enjoy the ride … I try to focus on what we’re doing as a team. We have some really important weeks ahead of us, so I’m caught up in all the team stuff right now and it’s kind of hard to appreciate all the other stuff that’s going on.”
BYU (21-8, 11-5) is looking to build on its four-game winning streak and hoping to return to the NCAA tournament in March.
Up until a couple of years ago, nobody could have predicted that Haws would break the scoring record held by Fredette, the 2011 consensus national player of the year.
“When we recruited him, we recruited him to come in and score,” Rose said. “That first year (in 2009-10), he was on a team with a lot of scorers. He still averaged in double-figures his freshman year. Then coming home (from a mission), it was a whole different situation. We desperately needed a guy to come in and take the scoring load. He’s been really good for three years. I don’t think you ever anticipate a guy to break records like that. I do know that he’s been a pretty prolific scorer since high school. Hopefully, he can get the points (Thursday) and get on to the next thing.”
Late in last week’s win over San Diego, fans at the Marriott Center were hoping that Haws, who scored 28 that night, would set the record at home.
“I heard them chanting how many points I had left,” he said.
Haws was serving a mission in the Philippines when Fredette topped Danny Ainge's 2,467 points to become BYU’s career scoring leader in 2011. Jimmermania, apparently, wasn't just a national phenomenon. Fredette averaged 28.9 points per game that season.
“I actually heard about Jimmer from the local members in the Philippines,” Haws recalled. “It was an amazing year for BYU. It would have been cool (to have been in Provo that season), but I loved my mission and I knew that was where I was supposed to be.”
Before this season began, Fredette, who now plays for the NBA's New Orleans Pelicans, told Haws, “I hope you have a great year, I hope things go well, and if my scoring record does go down to someone, I would love for it to go down to you.”
Fredette and Haws were teammates in 2009-10 and have maintained a good relationship, Haws said.
“We text each other every once in awhile. We see each other in the summer time. I kind of let him do his thing, and he lets me do my thing," Haws said. "I’ve got a lot of respect for that guy. When we played together, he didn’t treat me like a freshman. He treated me like an equal. I’ve always respected him for that.”
Haws said his dad, Marty, a former Cougar guard, has assisted him immensely in what he’s accomplished during his college career.
“He’s helped a ton. I talk to my dad every day about stuff,” Tyler said. “He’s my closest friend. I talk to him about basketball stuff and other things that are going on in my life. He’s been a huge part of it. I owe a lot of the credit to my dad.”
When Tyler was a kid, he would get up early in the morning every day and wake up his dad, who would take him to the nearby church to hone his shooting skills. Tyler has cultivated a repertoire of shots and a mid-range game that is a rarity in the game these days.
The countless hours spent in that smallish church gym as a youngster played a major role in shaping his game.
“We’ve chuckled over the years because our church has a ‘mid-range’ gym,” Marty has said. “That’s what we call it. So many churches have small courts. The corners don’t go out to 3-point range. I don’t know how much that has played into it, but that’s where we practiced a lot.”
Marty said Tyler has scored a lot of his points in no-nonsense fashion.
“Many times, you get to the end of a game and you don’t notice he has 20 points, or he has a ‘quiet’ 30,” Marty said.
Former Cougar Jeff Chatman, who lives in the Portland area, points out that Haws is a different type of scorer than Fredette, but there's no doubt in his mind where Haws stands in BYU basketball lore.
“Jimmer was really flashy. He shot a lot of NBA threes. He carried the team to a Sweet 16,” Chatman said. “Following Jimmer is a tough act to follow. But when all things are said and done, they’re going to see that Tyler is one of the greatest players ever to play (at BYU). Ainge’s record lasted for so long, and Jimmer came 30 years later. You think that the next time you’d see it would be a long time from now. That’s pretty incredible that we could have two players like that in one generation.”
Rose has been impressed with Haws’ consistency through the years.
“I’m amazed how difficult his assignment is every night and then how good he is in that assignment. There’s a lot of attention paid to him,” Rose said. “We all know what he does and we know how he does it. Everybody has a plan for it. But at the end of the game, you see that he’s scored between 20 and 30 points, he’s got four or five rebounds, and two or three assists and a couple of steals. He’s just been really consistent. What I notice is the same approach he’s had the three years we’ve had since his mission.”
Guard Kyle Collinsworth, who has played with Haws the last two seasons, has enjoyed being his teammate.
“There’s a lot of good memories of him hitting a ton of shots. He always finds a way to put the ball in the hole,” Collinsworth said. “He’s very creative with his shots. He’s been a great friend, and mentor, on this journey we’ve been on. It’s been awesome playing with him.”