BYU vs. San Diego Postgame Notes
PROVO, Utah – TJ Haws’ and Jahshire Hardnett’s career nights helped BYU men’s basketball beat San Diego 74-58 at the Marriott Center on Saturday night.
"What a good game," BYU head coach Dave Rose said. "A little back and forth, both teams playing hard. I thought that San Diego’s physical presence and their ability to make it hard on us on both ends of the floor was impressive. It was a challenge. Great crowd. I'm happy we got the win and I look forward to next week."
Haws tied his season-high 24 points, leading the Cougars in scoring and had a career-high of four steals. Hardnett scored a career-high 17 points and grabbed a career high eight rebounds.
San Diego (13-7, 4-4 WCC) won the tip and scored the first basket of the game on a jump shot. BYU (17-4, 6-2 WCC) missed three consecutive shots, but tied the game 2-2 with a pair of free-throws by Yoeli Childs with 18:09 left in the first half.
Both teams struggled shooting from the field early on and the Toreros took a 4-6 lead with 15 minutes left in the first period. The Cougars answered with baskets on back-to-back offensive possessions from Haws and Childs to give BYU an 8-6 lead.
The Cougars' shots started to fall when Haws hit his first 3-point shot of the game and Childs scored in the post off an offensive rebound. This pushed the Cougars’ lead to 15-9 with 11:28 left in the half.
San Diego’s Olin Carter III scored seven consecutive points to help the Toreros complete a 10-4 run and even the game at 19-19 with 7:11 left in the first half.
Elijah Bryant scored five points off of two free-throws and a trey to help BYU answer with a 10-2 run to give BYU a 29-21 lead with 3:49 left in the period.
Harnett drew an offensive foul to give the Cougars the final shot of the half with 0:10 left on the clock. Haws’ 3-point shot from the top of the arc rattled out as the buzzer sounded and sent BYU into the locker room with a 35-26 advantage.
San Diego opened up the half with seven straight points in the first few minutes to close the gap to 35-33. Haws scored the first basket for BYU with 16:15 left in the game after the Cougars missed scoring in their first five possessions.
The Toreros took advantage of BYU’s cold shooting to take a 38-37 lead. Haws answered with a 3-pointer on the ensuing possession to give the Cougars the lead once again.
Luke Worthington stole the ball from the Toreros and Childs capitalized off the turnover with a bucket from beyond the arc. A jumper by Worthington and another Haws trey extended BYU’s lead to 51-43 with just under 10 minutes remaining in the game.
A jumper by Carter III cut the Cougar lead to five points, but Haws drove through the lane to score a layup to push BYU’s lead back to seven with a score of 55-48 with 6:29 left in the second half.
BYU started to pull away from the Toreros in the final five minutes. Haws started a run with his fourth 3-point shot from deep. Hardnett grabbed his eighth rebound and was fouled scoring a fast break layup. His made free throw gave BYU a 67-54 lead with 3:26 left.
Hardnett closed the game off with a 3-pointer to extend BYU’s lead to 16 points and a 74-58 victory over the Toreros.
BYU next travels to play St. Mary’s on Thursday, Jan. 25, at 8 p.m. PST. The game will be nationally televised on ESPN2 as well as broadcast on BYU Radio – Sirius XM 143, the BYU Sports Network and 1160 AM/102.7 FM.