It hasn’t been too difficult to pinpoint what has led to the BYU basketball team’s two-game losing skid the past six days, or when the meltdowns have happened.
“One (reason) is we are playing really good teams that are hard to guard. Number two, a lot of that is self-inflicted. We are turning the ball over too much.”
— BYU coach Kevin Young on the Cougars' recent struggles
Lapses on both ends of the floor in the second halves of blowout losses to Arizona and Cincinnati have left coach Kevin Young’s team reeling with eight games remaining on its Big 12 slate.
BYU was tied 41-41 at the half with now-No. 13 Arizona before falling 85-74 in Provo last Tuesday. The Cougars led 42-39 at halftime at Fifth Third Arena before getting demolished in the second half and losing 84-66 at Cincinnati on Saturday.
In both cases, guys got hot, particularly guards, and the Cougars simply could not stop them. Against Arizona, it was Caleb Love and Jaden Bradley. Against Cincy, it was Jizzle James, Josh Reed and Day Day Thomas. Young said Monday that BYU can’t use the fact that it has faced some really talented scorers the past two games as an excuse, but the first-year coach acknowledged their greatness.
“We have to be able to adjust when a guy gets going. That is where, for me, I gotta do a better job schematically to go get the ball out of a guy’s hands when they are starting to cook like that,” Young said during Monday’s weekly press briefing. “Ultimately we have to be able to get stops with the guy in front of us.”
That’s one of the issues with this year’s club. Aside from Rutgers transfer Mawot Mag, and Trey Stewart in limited minutes off the bench, there’s no defensive stopper. There’s no guard who can stop dribble penetration, and when that happens teams get easy looks from 3-point range.
Don’t look now, but it doesn’t get any easier on Tuesday, when the Cougars (15-8, 6-6) face West Virginia (15-8, 6-6) and all-everything guard Javon Small at WVU Coliseum (5 p.m. MST, CBSSN). Small, 6-foot-3, is averaging 18.9 points per game and coming off a 14-point, eight-assist performance in the Mountaineers’ 72-61 win over Utah on Saturday.
“He is one of the most dynamic guards in the league. I really like how he plays,” Young said. “So he will challenge us and we will have to make sure we do a better job on him than we did on the Cincinnati backcourt.”
What is infuriating for the Cougars is that they played well offensively in the first halves against the Wildcats and Bearcats, then just couldn’t keep up offensively in the final 20 minutes. BYU is 14-5 this season when leading at halftime, but in all five of those losses, that halftime lead was five points or fewer.
Long scoring droughts in the second half plagued them in both losses.
“One (reason) is we are playing really good teams that are hard to guard. Number two, a lot of that is self-inflicted. We are turning the ball over too much. We are giving up too many offensive rebounds,” Young said. “I think on the whole our half-court defense hasn’t been bad. It is just self-inflicted (things).”
Defensive rebounding has been a team strength, but in February that hasn’t been the case; Arizona got 12 offensive rebounds, while Cincinnati got 11 and turned them into 16 second-chance points.
“As it relates to Cincinnati, they hit an astronomical amount of tough shots. Long 2s, mid-range shots that for them and for every team historically don’t go in. I think they were 12 for 18 (in those),” Young said. “So we gotta adjust.
“I think on the whole our defense definitely needs to get better,” Young continued. “But a lot of it, in my mind, is coming out of areas that aren’t necessarily defense-related in terms of not turning the basketball over, and then obviously finishing out possessions with rebounding.”
In the second half against Cincinnati, BYU got some good minutes and production from a couple of unexpected sources, reserves Trey Stewart and Mihailo Boskovic. Stewart hit a 3-pointer and Boskovic had eight points and a rebound in nine minutes.
Young said Stewart plays defense “with his hair on fire, in a good way,” and both reserves are competitive and want to be on the floor. He said both bring intensity to the lineup and have “earned themselves certainly the right to be in the discussion even more” for playing time.
This is easily BYU’s longest road trip of the season, as the team traveled from Cincinnati to West Virginia after the loss and practiced in Morgantown Monday. Young said he “got on them pretty good” in a film session Monday morning and addressed a variety of issues, including the need for toughness with the ball on offense to cut down on turnovers.
“We had a great practice today. That is one thing that I really respect about this group of players, is they really bring it,” he said. “… I was very impressed with the way that they responded to that meeting we had this morning. I thought we had a really good practice today and I look forward to us being able to carry that over into the game.”
Young said it is a long season and all teams go through rough patches, like the one in early January when the Cougars lost three straight.
“When we do the things that we want to do, we are a good basketball team. And when we don’t, we come up short, like most teams,” he said. “Yes, I do think we will (finish strong). We will put on a nice run here this second half, latter part of the conference slate. I am very confident in our ability to do that. We know what is at stake. We are in a good position in this game. West Virginia is a really big game. We know that. I know that. The guys know that.
“We look forward to having this game be the one that puts us in a position to reel off some wins of our own,” he concluded.
BYU assistant away for personal reasons
Fans may have noticed that assistant coach Brandon Dunson has not been on the bench with the team the past four games. Young told the Deseret News on Monday that the former Stanford, Denver, Cal State Fullerton and Nevada assistant is away from the program currently and Young is “not sure” when Dunson will return.
“He is out for personal reasons, dealing with a family matter,” Young said.
