The Cougars soar past the Portland Pilots with the help of Matt Carlino- and his career high eight three-point shots.
Coming off a big win against Gonzaga, BYU came into this game with revenge in mind. The last time the Cougars met the Pilots it was a whirlwind game at Portland that went into triple overtime, in the end leaving BYU with a disappointing loss of 110-114.
This time around BYU was anything but average, playing a flawless game all the way around with Anson Winder throwing up 19 total points, Tyler Haws 15 total points. The star of the night was without a doubt Carlino, who in the end lit up the Marriott Center with a career high 30 total points, four steals and eight three-point shots, an aggressive performance Portland wasn’t expecting to face putting BYU on top 89-72.
“I just felt like everything was going in. It was one of those nights, I don’t know how to describe it, everything I was throwing up was going in so it was kind of revenge for what (Bobby) Sharp did to us at their place.” Carlino said.
Although the end of the season, the whole team has been playing great basketball creating a conference strong program heading into the tournament. This home court win over Portland means a lot, marking a win against every team in the WCC at least once for the Cougars, a cushion that will boost them rolling into the WCC conference tournament in Las Vegas.
BYU’s performance was not so comforting to Pilot’s head coach Eric Reveno.
“You are playing with fire, especially if you make mistakes. If you let them get nine steals against you, you pay.” Reveno said. “They have some effective inside play and they are just a very good basketball team that’s a tough matchup. Defensively I thought that they were at a level that really disrupted us.”
BYU has had a weekend for the books, ultimately warning the WCC conference that they are a force to watch out for.
“To be able to beat everybody in your league, that’s a goal you set out to every season and it has been a while. I’m really happy for the guys and I think that the performance this weekend was great, and they are coming off some really big wins.” Rose said. “Sometimes you say to your team ‘that’s really solid’ or ‘that’s a really good job’ but with this thing we played well and I think we found a lot more to our team.”
The Cougar’s next matchup against San Diego is the last game of the season before the conference tournament. With some players coming off injury fairly well, others having career-high scoring nights, BYU’s NCAA hopes are as alive and well as ever, with seemingly nobody there to bring them down.
