No. 6 Iowa State refused to give No. 20 BYU its upset thunder.
The scene at the end told the story. BYU center Fouss Traore was on the bench with his head down between his knees, frustration and disappointment evident. He’d turned the ball over with a travel right when BYU had a chance to score and take the lead on the Cyclones as a packed crowd screamed at an ear-shattering decibel level.
In a real Big 12 slugfest, the Cyclones deserve credit for battling back from 14 down to hold off No. 20 BYU in the final minute 68-63.
This game resembled a wrestling match. It had more bumps, pushes and fender bangers than a stock car race. Players on both sides had red arms from hacks and scratches. The officials let the men play like men.
Iowa State simply made more shots when it counted in the intense fog of a hard-fought battle.
BYU, however, did put on a clinic for about 30 minutes in Ames. Nobody had dominated them this year like that for a half.
Then the magic left Mark Pope’s squad. Eight 3-pointers made (28%) was three percentage points shot for a win, this season tells us of this Cougar team.
“We were full of fight and on our toes, but down the stretch we were a little bit wanting,” BYU head coach Mark Pope told a KSL Radio audience afterwards. “The 17 turnovers were the story of the game,” he said.
And three of those came on BYU’s final five possessions of the game.
“We shot it well in the first half and had only six or seven turnovers,” said Pope. “I loved the shots we got for most of the second half, I liked how we were guarding, but we needed to hold onto the ball. There’s a ton of stuff we’d like back.”
In that final half minute when BYU had every opportunity to stage an upset, the Cougars fumbled the ball around, turned it over on losing the handle and a travel. You can’t beat Iowa State by failing to score a field goal in the final 4:24. But that’s what the Cougars did.
Iowa State deserved the comeback victory by ripping off a 9-0 run on the Cougars after a Jaxson Robinson turnover. Led by Curtis Jones, those points came in 90 seconds with just under 7 minutes to play in the game.
On BYU’s side of things, the squad known for its elite passing and assists, chugged to a stop at crunch time.
With a chance to take the lead in the final minute:
Point guard Dallin Hall threw a turning, twisting jump pass behind him while in the air, intended for Richie Saunders, and it aired its way out of bounds.
Traore caught a high post pass and took too many steps in a second turnover.
In the last 15 seconds, Hall tried to drive on All-America candidate Tamin Lipsey as if he was facing a guard from Santa Clara and lost the handle at the baseline.
BYU lost because it could not make a field goal in the final 4:24 and was outscored 41-25 in the second half.
After Saunders made a pair of free throws to give BYU a 63-61 lead at 4:24, BYU never scored again and Iowa State scored seven straight.
In an exercise of second-guessing, Pope should have had Aly Khalifa in the game during that stretch. He’d have opened up driving lanes, probably made some big passes, and forced the ball out the hands of BYU dribblers who tried to take it all on themselves and failed. If Khalifa could have made them cutters instead of dribblers and rewarded their angles, it might have made the difference with some layins or more drawn fouls.
The other factor was far too many missed close shots by the Cougars. They had their chance against the league’s best defense on the toughest home court in the league aside from Kansas.
It was an entertaining, big-time atmosphere that felt like an NCAA Tournament game. BYU came to play, answered the bell, outrebounded Iowa State by 10, but faded.
Lessons learned again.
In wins against TCU and at Kansas, Pope demanded his team play downhill and be aggressive. They did exactly that in Ames.
“We refuse to play on our heels,” Pope said. “We’ll learn and live with every decision we make. This is what happens on the road in a great league on a tremendous home court. Our execution wasn’t our greatest.”
In the end, Pope did get another tremendous effort out of Super Sophomore Saunders, who was a perfect 6 for 6 from the field and 3 of 3 from beyond the arc in the first half. He finished with 20 points, tying a career-high.
While he misfired from trey land in the second half, so did BYU’s most accurate bomber Trevin Knell, who missed two wide-open shots during Iowa State’s big run.
No shame in losing in Ames.
But what could have been certainly makes for a long flight back to Provo.