No. 14 BYU invited the legendary Jerry Sloan’s Evansville Purple Aces into the Marriott Center Tuesday and put a Sloan-style pistol-whipping on his alma mater, 96-55.
And it wasn’t that close.
The Cougars held Evansville to 30 points under its scoring average, and the 8-0 start for Mark Pope’s team is the best at BYU since 2011.
Jaxson Robinson continued his torrid shooting off the bench, leading all scorers with 19 points. BYU had six players in double figures with one only player, Trevin Knell, playing more than 25 minutes for his 13 points.
The Cougars went on a 17-0 run before Robinson ever lit up.
Bringing Robinson off the bench is like a video game cheat.
“You give a good team an inch, they take a mile,” said Evansville coach David Ragland.
Pope is 32-2 at BYU when holding a team under 60, which the Cougars have done five times this season.
Pope said he couldn’t compare his team to that 2011 team right now.
“We’re just trying to get our guys lost in the details right now and that’s fun,” he said. “I’ve never coached a team where they’ve been so focused on the game on the court and are never distracted by wins, the media, the opponent, or where we play. They care about the details.”
In an exercise leading up to Saturday’s rivalry game at Utah, BYU bludgeoned 7-2 Evansville on the boards 47-34, and outscored UE in bench points 46-16.
The Cougars won the battle in the paint 40-26 and outshot the visitors 53% to 33% while making 14 3s on 44% shooting beyond the arc to Evansville’s 17%.
The 41-point victory, which cooled down from a 47-point lead at 85-38 with 5:35 left in the game on a Knell layup, surpassed BYU’s standard as No. 2 in the NCAA win margin by 25 points.
And the Cougars let it slip a bit in the waning moments of the game.
Robinson scored 14 points in 13 minutes to bust open a 10-point BYU lead in the first half and push it to 47-25 at intermission.
Robinson hit a trio of 3-pointers, one of them a 4-point play when he was fouled with 1:15 to play in the period.
Robinson didn’t enter the game until eight minutes after tipoff.
“The game was super fun,” said Knell. “Coach always talks about keep to the standard no matter the team or circumstances. He talks about us coming in a wave. We play 17 guys and the standard is doing the little things.”
BYU continued its season-long assault from outside, displaying a consistent attack from distance in keeping with its role as one of the top 3-point shooting teams in the country.
The Cougars closed the first half on a 16-2 run highlighted by a back cut pass from Aly Khalifa to Noah Waterman at the buzzer.
Khalifa continued to display his passing skills in this game and got his first 3-point field goal of the season when left alone at the top of the key with 14:13 left in the first half to give BYU a 12-10 lead.
Evansville came to Provo a 7-1 team but was overwhelmed by BYU’s inside and outside attack and found it tough to run its offense on the road against Pope’s defense and rotation.
Effective both inside and out midway through the first half, Knell and Dallin Hall combined for three treys to go with Robinson’s 3 of 5 from distance.
Evansville simply couldn’t keep pace.
BYU had made 8 of 19 from beyond the arc at half while UE converted 3 of 16, a differential of 24-9 points in the first 20 minutes. It’s a formula BYU has relied upon all season.
Analysts say BYU should stick with the bomb-launching as a national leader in makes per game (12.6) and attempts (33.0). Both statistical standards were matched or surpassed Tuesday night.
BYU had 26 assists, more than Evansville’s 22 field goals.
That’s some team grease.
Knell said BYU’s defense is clicking at present because of the high level of communication he and his teammates deploy during the game.
“Also, we are so mature this year that we can do three things at once and trust the guy in the back end,” he said.
“We have a blue collar attitude. We have what we call the combat zone and we go out to win the combat zone no matter what.”
The Cougars next play the Utes, who defeated Southern Utah Tuesday night 88-86.
“We’re just going to take it for a ride and see where we get,” said Pope of this early season, which has the Cougars ranked in the top five in KenPom heading into the team’s toughest test of the preseason.