By Jed McClellan
The BYU women?s basketball team had its Mountain West Conference title and NCAA Tournament hopes shot down by Utah on Friday afternoon.
Utah used phenomenal shooting to down the Cougars 64-48 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colo.
BYU kept the Utes out of the paint and forced them to shoot from outside, but unfortunately for the Cougars, they hit most of them. Utah hit 11 3-pointers with many coming at crucial times to control the game.
?You have to give Utah credit ? they don?t beat themselves,? BYU head coach Jeff Judkins said in a news release. ?They have smart players, and they are very well coached.?
The Cougars came out and got on top of the Utes early to take a 9-2 lead, but then Utah battled back to take the lead at 12-11.
The Utes then went on a 14-1 run that lasted five minutes, including a streak of 11 straight points.
BYU didn?t give up, and despite trailing by as many as 15 in the first half, it battled back to be down by just eight at the half, 35-27.
Julie Sullivan hit a jumper just six seconds into the second half, and after Utah quickly answered with a layup, she hit another one to cut the lead back to six points. But once again, the Utes answered with another 3-pointer to push the lead back to nine.
The Cougars wouldn?t give up and continued to pound the ball inside to keep it close, outscoring the Utes 16-4 in the paint in the second half. Utah was content to just keeping shooting 3-pointers, and hit five of its 11 in the second half.
It also didn?t help that Sullivan, BYU?s leading scorer and an all-MWC guard, was in foul trouble for much of the second half.
?Julie got in foul trouble, which put her in a tough situation,? Judkins said. ?She just wanted it so bad, she didn?t let the game come to her. I?m proud of our team. We?ve had a great year. We thought we could get this one, but sometimes you want something too bad and you try too hard.?