Utah and BYU put on an overtime show Saturday night, but now it’s back to the Big 12 grind.

That will be plenty challenging.

The Utes take on league-leading Houston on Tuesday and the Cougars travel to Colorado.

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Not only does Utah carry bragging rights over BYU with the 73-72 win, but Craig Smith’s team left Saturday’s win with more answers than BYU’s Kevin Young.

Both men entered the weekend with question marks, whiteboard formulas and the hope of finding some momentum. Smith prevailed in that quest.

A big part of the answer came in how Smith utilizes junior Ezra Ausar, an 11.2 points-a-game power forward who led the Utes during a personal second-half 8-0 run and ended up with a season-high 26 points.

At several stages of Ausar’s performance, BYU had no answer for his baseline moves and power dunks.

“I don’t know what got into him,” Utah coach Craig Smith said of his leading scorer, “but it needs to happen all the time.

“What a game. It’s obviously a lot easier for me to say that. These rivalry games, you just throw everything out the door. Fortunately for us we were able to make one more play.”

As for the Cougars, Young will head to Boulder with his team still searching for a road-win formula, one that includes finding an alpha dog to finish games, a plan to not give up leads in the second half, and a quick fix to some horrible free throw shooting.

If BYU can’t find a way to make more free throws, especially with the game on the line, it will be a hard, painful road in weeks to come in this league.

BYU shot 40% from the free-throw line (4 of 10) Saturday night in the Huntsman Center. That included senior and team leader Trevin Knell whiffing the front end of a one-and-one with five seconds to play and a chance to either add another overtime session or win the game outright.

Before that, Young got Fouss Traore, his leading scorer and most accurate shooter, the ball in the paint twice in crunch time. His shot bounced off the side of the rim both times.

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As for free throw shooting, the Cougars didn’t get much chance to practice that art form in this game. Utah had a whopping 22 more free throws (32 to 10), ultimately the difference in the game.

Folks will argue for a while why the Utes’ Hunter Erickson earned a foul and ultimately the winning free throw shot in overtime after executing a penetrating drive and shot attempt, while BYU’s Dawson Baker did the same and came away empty-handed. But that is all wiped out with Knell’s misfire at his golden opportunity to just win the game with a couple of free throws with seconds left.

“We’ve got to learn how to win close games,” Young said afterward. “I just told our club in there that you win and lose games on the margins. We have come up short too many times and that’s disappointing.”

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Comments

No, the road isn’t going to get easier for Utah or BYU, but it was good to see both programs playing in the same league and packing an arena, bringing the passion and effort.

The rematch in Provo in March will be equally as intense and fun to watch.

West Virginia knocked off No. 2 Iowa State on Saturday 64-57, Kansas took care of Kansas State 84-74, Houston had to go down to the wire with UCF for a 69-68 win. Cincinnati took care of ASU 67-60, Texas Tech upset Arizona 70-54 and struggling Oklahoma State beat Colorado 83-73.

Perhaps BYU will find a road celebration in Colorado this week. If not, Young will have a very grumpy team to baby-sit in the coming days.

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