With just under 10 minutes left to play Saturday at Texas Tech, BYU held a 9-point advantage over the Red Raiders.
But Texas Tech proceeded to completely stun and shut down the Cougars, ending the contest on a 32-10 run to clinch a 84-71 victory.
It was the Red Raiders’ third consecutive win over BYU and the Cougars’ first conference loss of the season.
“(It was) obviously a super talented BYU team who had us on the ropes,” Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland said after the game. “The energy in the United Supermarkets Arena is just hard to describe to people until you experience it. ... Our guys believed we were going to win the game but we had to do it in a very defensive way.
“The last 10 minutes we probably played the best defense we’ve played this year. For as many minutes as our guys played, the grit shows a ton about the compete level of JT Toppin, Christian Anderson and how it’s just oozing throughout the rest of the guys. We are believing we can win no matter what it takes.”
Texas Tech stars Toppin and Anderson combined for 49 points, but it was their winning defensive effort that McCasland was most impressed with.
“I just love seeing JT Toppin and Christian Anderson compete like they did defensively down the stretch,” McCasland said. “They’re carrying a heavy load on offense playing 40 minutes, but they’re playing defense when it matters the most.”
BYU’s freshman phenom AJ Dybantsa — who played for McCasland this past summer for Team USA in the FIBA U19 World Cup — turned in the worst performance of his collegiate career thus far, scoring 13 points on 6 of 17 shooting, only getting to the free throw line once and coughing up three turnovers.
But though his team was quite successful in making Dybantsa’s life difficult, McCasland still had plenty of praise for the heralded NBA prospect.
“AJ’s really good, he’ll bounce back,” McCasland said. “I mean, he’s a load to handle as we all saw.
“... Ton of respect for BYU, obviously it’s a crazy good team and we know we’ll get an opportunity to play them again. So, just respect to those guys and coach (Kevin) Young for how they compete.”
With the win, Texas Tech is now 14-4 on the season and 4-1 in Big 12 play, as defeating BYU could prove to be a major confidence boost for the Red Raiders considering their upcoming schedule of facing Baylor, Houston, UCF and Kansas over the next two weeks.
“In our league, you better take the things that you know put you in those positions to win the game and you better try to double down on it,” McCasland said. “Don’t think you’ve arrived, because man, this league, you go on the road, you can get beat by anybody on any night and get beat bad.
“I just hope what (beating BYU) does is it anchors us to the core principles of how we want to defend and our guys start to see the the the way you beat teams is (by) getting stops.”