STILLWATER, Oklahoma — One specific aspect of No. 16 BYU’s 99-92 loss at Oklahoma State Wednesday night seemed to bother Kevin Young the most.
It was the first thing he brought up to reporters postgame, and it was something he came back to reference multiple times thereafter:
Young’s Cougars had no answer for Oklahoma State down low, and the subsequent results proved eye-poppingly jarring.
“Our defense, it was terrible,” Young said bluntly. “They had 52 points in the paint. They scored at will. We couldn’t keep anyone in front of us, and it was just a layup fest. They had 52 points in the paint.”
Those 52 paint points from Oklahoma State — BYU was allowing just over 30 per game entering Wednesday — were the crown jewel of an overall 99-point outburst for the Cowboys, marking the most prolific scoring effort against the Cougars all season and resulting in a court-storming scene at Gallagher-Iba Arena to celebrate the upset victory.
Entering Wednesday, BYU had not lost to an unranked opponent in 22 previous tries dating back to last season. The Cougars had come to Stillwater in search of a bounce back win before heading into a particularly tough Big 12 stretch.
Instead, Young’s team finds itself on a 3-game losing skid and in desperate need of defensive repair at arguably the most difficult point of the schedule to be starting from scratch momentum-wise.
“We’ve just got to get ourselves out of this hole,” BYU’s AJ Dybantsa said after the loss. “KY said in the team meeting after, it’s hard to go through adversity, but I mean, if we want to be the team that we want to be, we’ve got to dig ourselves out this.”
BYU stumbled out the gate, coughing up eight turnovers in the first eight minutes of play to trail by 15 points after nearly 15 minutes.
In all, the Cougars racked up 16 turnovers — 10 coming from Dybantsa and Rob Wright III — which led to 21 Oklahoma State points.
“It was why we got into a hole,” Young said of the turnovers. “AJ was careless with the ball to start, then he started to lock in and that’s when the game changed. I don’t know if we’ve had a game all year where him and Rob had 10 turnovers combined, five apiece.
“You have to credit Oklahoma State, that’s kind of what they do (defensively). However, I thought the (turnovers) we had were actually unforced for the most part, that was the disappointing part.”
Once BYU tightened its ball security, the Cougars caught fire in the half’s final minutes, ending on a 19-4 run to go into halftime with the score tied at 41 points apiece.
But BYU’s brilliant closing stretch of the first half won’t go down as a turning point of the night or the season, but rather just the prelude to an awkward ending.
The Cougars went on to surrender 58 points after halftime in the 7-point loss — though it felt like a much greater margin.
How disappointing was BYU’s defense? Against the Cowboys, the Cougars shot 50% from the field, 43.3% from 3-point range and scored 92 points in a Quad 1, true road environment and still came up short.
As Young would probably point out, giving up 52 paint points goes a long way in erasing such impressive offensive showing.
“I mean, we couldn’t guard the ball. We got too spread out,” Young said. “That’s way too many, you know, 52 points in the paint, it’s not good, right? And then attention to detail, that’s something that our team has struggled with ... but more than anything, just our one on one defense was abysmal.”
In all, Oklahoma State averaged 1.32 points per possession, with a sizzling mark of 1.57 PPP in the second half. The Cowboys shot 54.7% from the field, made 22 of 34 free throws, only turned the ball over eight times, and while they only hit seven 3-pointers, five came from Anthony Roy as part of a 30-point performance.
Four other Cowboys players scored in double figures, including Jaylen Curry, whose 18 points off the bench was double the scoring of BYU’s entire reserve unit.
“They play hard, Steve (Lutz) gets his guys ready to really get after you, that’s something I respect about him,” Young said of Oklahoma State. “I don’t know if there was anything that really caught me by surprise, so to speak, but I thought, you know, probably just that (there were so) many guys able to downhill attack, you know, was something that maybe put us on our heels a little bit.
“But, you know, every night in this league is tough, man. It really is. (Tonight) obviously just proved it even more, there’s just no off nights in our league. The talent, the coaching, the atmospheres, it’s top notch.”
Despite the five turnovers, Dybantsa posted a game-high 36 points on 13 of 20 shooting with five made 3-pointers, seven rebounds and four assists.
But due to BYU’s defensive dud, the freshman superstar’s stellar night will likely just be lost to history.
Richie Saunders added 20 points and eight rebounds, while Wright finished with 15 points, four boards and four assists.
Of BYU’s 92 points, 71 (77%) came from the aforementioned “Brig 3″ of Dybantsa, Saunders and Wright.
The Cougars have now lost three games in a row for the first time all season and just the second time in Young’s tenure with the program, with another massive matchup looming ahead in the form of No. 8 Houston visiting Provo on Saturday.
“My mentality in life is just to embrace the hard. You’ve got to plow through things when it’s not going your way,” Young said. “I know what kind of character we have in our locker room, and I know it means a lot to our group.
”If this is a gut check, you know, we got nine games left in the regular season. The good thing about the Big 12 is every night’s a great opportunity. You know, this was a Quad 1 opportunity that we dropped and then, you know, we got to go home and regroup and get ready for obviously a good Houston team.
“... We’re just going through it right now, and we’ve just got to lick our wounds and just work, work, work and figure out what each guy individually can do to help the team right now.”
