In the first-ever meeting between BYU and Mount St. Mary’s, the Cougars sent the Mountaineers home with yet another loss.
Mount St. Mary’s came out strong giving the Cougars a taste of what head coach Jamion Christian refers to as “mayhem.” Mayhem is his team’s style of play that consists of a pressing defense and an offense reliant on the three-point shot.
The Mountaineers stayed up with BYU in a 14–14 point game within the first five minutes. With the game tied at 14–14, BYU went on a 23–5 run to lead 37–19 with 7:32 left in the first half. At the half BYU led by 20 points.
“This BYU team is a great team,” Christian said at halftime. “They just played better than us. … Last time I checked three was worth more than two so we are down 20 right now and we are going to try and win the first four minutes from beyond the three-point line.”
The Mountaineers were 13–40 from beyond the arch and with each miss BYU’s lead got larger. BYU scored 28 fast break points and held Mount Saint Mary’s to no fast break points
BYU’s leading scorer Tyler Haws sat out the entire game due to a lower abdominal strain he was recovering from. Haws will also sit out for the Colorado Mesa game on Saturday, Nov. 16.
In the absence of Haws many other players had an opportunity to shine.
“All in all I think the best thing about this game is a lot of young guys got a lot of minutes and they produced, which is a good sign,” Rose said.
Six players from the BYU team scored in double digits. Anson Winder, who started in place of Haws, ended the game with a career-high 22 points. Freshman Eric Mika added a career-high 20 points, four rebounds and two blocks. Kyle Collinsworth finished with his second double-double of the season, 13 points and 10 rebounds to go with four assists. Matt Carlino had his lowest scoring game of the season with 10 points, but contributed eight assists, six rebounds, three steals and a block.
In the first half of the game freshman Frank Bartley scored 10 points without missing a single shot. He ended the game with a career-highs 16 points and seven rebounds along with Skyler Halford who added 15 points for his career-high.
“I think we all knew coming in we would have bigger roles tonight because Tyler is such a key to our team and he scores so many of our points,” Winder said. “We all knew we had to step up tonight and I feel like we did that.”
This win marks the second strait game this season where BYU scored more than 100 points. BYU hasn’t had back-to-back 100-point games since 1986. So far the Cougars have had an average of 100.3 points a game.
“We look forward to tomorrow and hope we can repeat this game and come out with a lot of energy and see if we can improve a little bit on execution,” Rose said.
The Cougars play Colorado Mesa to continue the College Basketball Experience Hall of Fame Classic in the Marriott Center on Saturday Nov. 16, at 7:30 p.m. MST. The game will be televised live on BYUtv and broadcast on the Cougar IMG Sports Network on KSL Newsradio 102.7 FM/1160 AM.
