Texas basketball yet again proved to be an inferior squad in the second half after blowing the initially close match up to No. 21 BYU 84-72 Saturday in Provo, Utah.
The Longhorns, now 3–4 in conference play, came into the second half with a three point deficit to the Cougars and somehow managed to stretch that small lead into a 17 point blowout for BYU with 8:30 left in the second. The reason for this massive jump: defense. A lack of defense that is.
BYU seemed to find it way too easy to find the massive holes in Texas’ defense. Multiple face cuts and lack of coverage resulted in multiple effortless points for the Cougars.
Along with these unguarded scoring opportunities, BYU had a strong offense, hitting 64% of their shots in field goal range and 41.2% in the three-point range. Five members of the Cougars finished the game scoring in the double digits.
Despite the loss, graduate forward Dylan Disu led both teams with a commendable 19 points and attained seven rebounds. Sophomore guard Chendall Weaver played arguably one of his best games for Texas with 15 points, 5 offensive rebounds and two steals. One of Weaver’s signature moves this season seems to be dunking the ball off a missed shot. After the putback, he hustled back on defense, while blowing the BYU crowd a kiss.
One major factor that did put a damper on the Longhorns was the intensity of the Cougar arena. While Texas did know about the fervor of BYU’s crowd, it is another thing to go and play in it. The Cougar fandom packed the Marriott Center in a sea of blue and white. The crowd displayed large cutouts of hypnotic swirls that made it difficult to watch, let alone score a free throw. Texas shot a lower-than-normal 62.5% from the free throw line.
“[BYU is] one of the hardest places to play in the country, maybe the loudest place we played this year in the country,” head coach Rodney Terry said before taking on the Cougars. “For those of you not familiar with BYU basketball, they have an incredible home court…. Fans come out. They know basketball and they do a great job supporting their team.”
The future of the season is starting to look bleak for Texas as they now have to take on No. 4 Houston at home Jan 29. at 8 p.m. – a team BYU lost to earlier in the week. The only hope for a win is that Texas can come out and play like they did against Baylor at home one week ago.
