By DAVID FUHRIMAN
If the BYU men's basketball team was looking for a little early holiday help from good Saint Nick on Saturday night, they didn't get it. Instead, it looked like BYU was playing with a lump of coal in its stocking.
BYU dropped its fifth straight game on Saturday night, losing 83-67 on the road to Boise State. The Cougars are now 1-5 in regular season play.
BYU struggled in the first half, as Boise State came out shooting hot and playing a tough match-up zone defense. The momentum seemed to build for the Broncos, as BYU became frustrated with Boise State's pressure shooting and their own poor offensive performance -- BYU shot just 31 percent in the first half, and were 1-for-11 from behind the three-point arc.
'We were getting up on them, and getting in their faces,' senior forward Justin Weidauer said. 'But it seemed that they just kept hitting their shots. It was tough at that point.'
The Cougars hung around and made the game interesting at times in the second half, but were never able to get within 10 points of the Broncos, who move to 4-1 on the season. Missed free throws and dismal three-point shooting in the first half allowed the small and quick Boise State team to extend its lead to 15 points at halftime, and BYU could never quite recover.
By far the most impressive play of the night came from junior guard Danny Bower, a native of Nampa, Idaho, who scored 23 points in front of friends and family. Junior guard Brian Hamilton also added 17 points and six rebounds, and played all but two minutes of the game.
Although probably not the worst performance of the year for BYU, this was a game head coach Steve Cleveland thought the Cougars had a legitimate chance at winning. The 23 turnovers the Cougars committed -- which resulted in 26 points by Boise State -- was an unwelcome sight to a team that has had trouble with taking care of the ball in the past.
'We were just making stupid errors, doing things we normally wouldn't do,' senior forward Justin Weidauer said. 'Their defense got us a little frustrated in the first half, but a lot of the mistakes we were making were unforced -- dropping passes, throwing passes away, stuff like that.'
Despite already having a double-digit deficit going into the second half, BYU didn't give up. After being down by 21 points at one point, the Cougars shaved the Boise State lead down to 11 with 11 minutes to go. But from there, it was just a see-saw battle, with BYU never able to get the upper hand and make a run at the Broncos' lead.
'We definitely had our chances in that second half,' Weidauer said. 'We cut it to within 11 points, but then we had four straight turnovers, and that's kind of the way the whole game went. Whenever we started making a run, we would turn the ball over and lose what we had.'
The schedule doesn't get any easier for the Cougars. BYU will now come home to host Washington on Tuesday night, another challenging PAC 10 opponent.