LUBBOCK, Texas — With nine minutes and 23 seconds remaining in Saturday night’s Big 12 showdown between BYU and Texas Tech, a quiet hush fell over the crowd, aside from the couple hundred or so Cougar fans in attendance at 15,000-seat United Supermarkets Arena.
The visiting Cougars were threatening to make the Red Raiders’ recent mastery in the series disappear, as Richie Saunders’ 3-pointer with nine and a half minutes remaining pushed BYU’s lead to 61-52. Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland got a quick timeout.
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What happened after that could reverberate throughout the remainder of the season for the Cougars, as the Red Raiders scored 32 of the game’s next, and final, 42 points and rolled to an impressive 84-71 victory.
Texas Tech not only improved to 4-0 against BYU in Big 12 games the past three seasons, but the Red Raiders also snapped three noteworthy streaks that Kevin Young’s Cougar squad had been cherishing.
Gone is BYU’s 13-game winning streak, its 12-game Big 12 regular-season winning streak and its six-game winning streak in games away from the Marriott Center.
“We were executing our game plan. We were just trying to keep the right matchups, and we were doing that in that stretch,” said BYU guard Rob Wright, who scored a career-high 28 points on 9 of 17 shooting.
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A mild upset was definitely brewing, so what went wrong?
BYU’s downfall started, ironically, after Saunders swatted away a Texas Tech 3-point offering. Two offensive rebounds later, Tech’s LeJuan Watts — who labors in the shadows of stars JT Toppin and Christian Anderson — hit a 3-pointer with 8:30 remaining to end a 2:33 Red Raiders scoring drought.
Watts finished with a back-breaking 20 points and eight rebounds.
Coincidentally, Texas Tech won by 13 points despite not getting a single point from its bench, as Toppin and Anderson played all 40 minutes and Watts went more than 35, while Donovan Atwell and Jaylen Petty logged more than 36 apiece.
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Yet Texas Tech was clearly the more energized team down the stretch, bolstered by a raucous crowd.
Atwell was credited by McCasland for slowing down BYU star AJ Dybantsa, who was held to a season-low 13 points. Officials allowed the Red Raiders to bump and jostle the freshman phenom most of the game, and they took full advantage.
After Watts’ third-chance 3-pointer, Dybantsa missed a heavily contested leaner, and the game started getting away from the Cougars.
More disaster for the visitors followed, as Toppin registered a 3-point play and banked in a 3-pointer on consecutive possessions, and Wright was assessed a rare offensive foul.
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BYU would go the next four possessions without scoring before Wright’s bucket cut the deficit to 74-67. By then, it was “turn out the lights, the party’s over” for the Cougars.
Shot-making, or lack thereof, was the problem, Young said, refusing to blame the loss on a few critical calls at critical moments.
“This game is about making shots at the end of the day, and obviously you got to stop them from making shots, and they put a lot of stress on you, because they have talent,” Young said.
“They’re one of the best offensive teams, I think, in the country, because of how much shooting they have, with two dynamic players, and then on the flip side, we went cold, and that happens in games.”
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A few calls down the stretch didn’t go BYU’s way, but Young steered clear of that topic in his postgame remarks.
“Let me be very clear,” he said. “They out-played us. They out-coached us.”
So the Cougars turn their attention to another rivalry game with Utah, which knocked off TCU in the Huntsman Center Saturday afternoon to get its first Big 12 win of the season.
The Utes play at Kansas State on Tuesday, so the Cougars will have a little more extra time to prepare for the rematch of BYU’s win in Salt Lake City on Jan. 10.
Dybantsa saw his streak of 10 straight games of scoring 20 points or more halted, but Young is not concerned.
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“AJ is a smart young man,” Young said. “He’ll learn from this, and he’ll be better next time out.”
The Cougars were hoping a top 15 win on the road would propel them back into the top 10 of the national rankings, but instead they will probably head in the other direction when the new AP Top 25 poll is released.
Sunday, they dropped from No. 13 to No. 15 in Kenpom and from No. 8 to No. 11 in the NET rankings. They are now 4-2 in Quad 1 games.
The Cougars were close to full strength Saturday, after Abdullah “Bido” Ahmed missed the 76-70 win over TCU with a shoulder issue. The former G League player had six rebounds and blocked a shot in 16 minutes against the Red Raiders.
However, fellow big man Khadim Mboup sustained an injury in the second half and did not return after nearly playing 17 minutes. Young said he didn’t know the extent of Mboup’s injury after the game.
