New BYU basketball coach Kevin Young talks about toughness a lot, and the need to display it when it feels like everything is going against his talented but mistake-prone team.
Tuesday night, the Cougars showed they’ve been listening, pulling out the most impressive win to date in Young’s short tenure to get back on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Visiting BYU overcame a six-point deficit with six minutes remaining and surprised West Virginia 73-69 in front of 10,879 at WVU Coliseum by making all the right plays down the stretch.
Which players the Cougars (16-8, 7-6) leaned on were also a surprise, as BYU’s bench outscored WVU’s bench 38-18 and seldom-used reserves such as Trey Stewart and Mihailo Boskovic contributed mightily in crunch time.
Boskovic’s 3-point play with 9.3 seconds remaining sealed the Cougars’ second straight victory in Morgantown.
“The thing that I loved about this game, and I told our players (after), was that this was probably our best team win all year,” Young told the BYU Radio Network.
“We had multiple guys coming in that haven’t been a huge part of the rotation that ended up making massive plays, and everybody contributed.”
And it wasn’t just on the offensive end.
Mawot Mag and Stewart combined to hold WVU star Javon Small, a 19-point per game scorer, to just four shots and nine points (Small did have a game-high nine assists and was 4 of 5 from the free-throw line).
After getting sizzled by Cincinnati’s guards in that 84-66 loss Saturday afternoon, BYU turned the tables on the Mountaineers. Stewart, who had eight points, a rebound and an assist in six minutes, said playing tougher “was a huge emphasis” for the Cougars, who moved back into a tie for sixth place in the Big 12 standings with Baylor.
“Coach said bring that same energy that you brought in practice to the game, because that was a big thing (missing) at Cincinnati,” Stewart told the radio network.
“We were like, ‘We can’t be backing down. We can’t have people calling us soft,’ because at the end of the day, our guys work their butts off in practice. Coach always says we gotta bring it out when it matters the most and the crowd is loud, everything going against us.”
Leading the toughness charge was freshman Egor Demin, who overcame another shaky first half with clutch play after clutch play in the final six minutes.
His 3-point play got the Cougars within 3 with 6:11 remaining after Amani Hansberry made a couple quick buckets to get the crowd on a snowy night in the Appalachians to full throat.
Boskovic (six points in nine minutes) added a triple with just over five minutes remaining to give the Cougars a 63-62 lead. Demin would then score seven of BYU’s final 10 points, including two big free throws with 58 seconds left.
Those came after WVU’s Toby Okani grabbed Demin on a breakaway but somehow was just assessed a common foul rather than a flagrant 1 foul like it should have been.
“I have been talking to him about that quite a bit, trying to attack downhill more and more and more,” Young said of Demin’s aggressiveness in the second half.
“Obviously, I won’t make too big of a fuss about (the foul). I thought he could have gotten to the line 15 times tonight. They were fouling him quite a bit on his drives. Stuff they let go, honestly, it blows my mind what they allow in this league.”
The game featured five ties and 11 lead changes, which will probably come as a surprise to anyone who watched the first half. The Cougars turned the ball over nine times in the first 20 minutes, while WVU had just one giveaway in that stretch.
The Cougars gave it away only three times in the second half, another key to their improbable road win; according to Kenpom.com, West Virginia has the best home court advantage in the country.
Somehow, BYU overcame all that.
“Yeah, obviously we wanted to win both (road games of their trip),” Young said. “Coming out here, you felt like a split was going to be a good situation for us. More than anything, I am just proud of our guys’ response. Our team has responded really well to adversity through this season.”
More héroes off the bench: Dallin Hall, Fouss Traore and Kanon Catchings.
Hall added six points and four assists in 25 minutes, with just one turnover. Catchings added 11 points, including making 5 of 6 from the free-throw line, part of BYU’s 13 of 16 effort from the stripe.
Traore had seven points and six rebounds as Young went with the undersized center in the high pick-and-roll game late.
After Boskovic’s big bucket, and the foul, Young let loose for a little bit on the sidelines.
“Every now and then, man, it comes out,” he told the radio network. “That was obviously a huge play. … You put just so much energy, mentally and emotionally, into this game, and this was a massive moment for our team to be on the road and get a big win in a really, really awesome atmosphere against a good club.
“My emotions got the best of me.”
Just like the Cougars got the best of the Mountaineers, by being the tougher team when it mattered the most.