Individual Notes
Yoeli Childs led the team with 28 points and 10 rebounds for his 43rd career double-double. He also added three assists and one block.
Jake Toolson recorded 17 points, including five 3-pointers as he scored three plus treys for the 13th time this season. The guard dished out six assists, grabbed four steals and brought down three rebounds.
Leading the team with eight assists, TJ Haws also recorded 16 points and four rebounds. This is his 24th game with double figures.
Zac Seljaas came off the bench and scored 12 points, tallying his fifth game of the year with double digit points.
Kolby Lee went three of three from the field to score nine points while tallying five rebounds, one steal and one assist. He has now scored 3-pointers in back-to-back games.
Team Notes
Tonight’s attendance was 18,987 making it the first sell out in the Marriott Center since Feb. 24, 2018 when BYU hosted Gonzaga.
In the first half, the Cougars shot 51.4 percent from the field compared to the Bulldogs’ 45.8 percent as BYU held a 46-38 advantage.
On the game, the Cougars recorded 53.2 percent from the field, 40.7 percent from 3 and 77.8 percent from the charity stripe while Gonzaga tallied 41.7 percent from the field, 20.0 percent from beyond the arc and 82.1 percent from the free throw line.
BYU’s final score was its largest lead of the night at 15 points. The Cougars led for a total of 30 minutes and only trailed by six points in the first half.
The last time BYU beat the No. 2 team in the nation in Provo was Dec. 21, 1965, against St. Joseph's in the Smith Fieldhouse.
Mark Pope recorded his 100th career win in Saturday's victory against Gonzaga.
Postgame Quotes
BYU forward Yoeli Childs
"That was unbelievable. The fight that we had was incredible. I’m trying to be in the moment, but this team has such big goals that I can’t help but think of how encouraging this is for our future. They made their runs and they had great players out there making great plays. Nothing they did slowed us down. It gets me really excited for the future."
"We just wanted to fight for each other. The crazy thing about this team is that we weren’t just fighting for seniors because it was senior night. To us it was just another game where we had to fight for each other and make our last home game of the season special. It put us in a good position to finish second in the league."
"They’re a very good team and we all respect them. We were playing together on both ends of the floor. We had the mindset that it’s never one-on-one—it’s one-on-five. It’s a lot easier to make plays when you trust that your teammate has your back. We were locked in tonight on helping each other."
BYU guard TJ Haws
"Every win right now is huge for us. This win just gives us more confidence and keeps our momentum going. There’s magic that happens in March and this momentum will be good for us. The thing that this team has done well all year is that we take it one game at a time. We’re excited for next week."
"It was unbelievable. This place is amazing and the fans are incredible. How they showed up tonight is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced."
"When you experience those lows, winning is that much sweeter. This team has been through a lot this year but what I love about us is that we continue to fight. Adversity comes our way and the next day we’re at practice ready to fight. When you have a team that works so hard, moments like this happen."
BYU guard Jake Toolson
On team showing
"It shows that we can learn and grow. We’re not satisfied. We can continue to get better and that’s been our focus all year long. We battled tonight and really laid it all on the line. The message is pretty consistent across the team–we want to fight for each other. There’s a lot of seniors on this team and it’s their last run at this. We want to do everything we can to win and tonight shows us that we can do that."
"We wanted to continue to fight. We knew they were going to make runs and we wanted to take it one possession at a time. I think we were letting them get out at transition which they did really well. Once we took care of that and we were able to get some buckets, we gained the lead back. If we felt like things weren’t going our way, we just wanted to move onto the next play."
"I’m so happy for him and this win. He believes in us and loves us. I feel blessed to be able to play for him. If you ask him about it, he’ll give all the credit to everyone else. What a special night."
BYU head coach Mark Pope
“I’m super happy. It just doesn’t happen like this. They just kind of dug in and kept battling for four years or five years or six years. Then they set the table with a summer that was really demanding and difficult. Waking up every single morning and fighting their own agenda so that they could sacrifice for this team. A lot of times you do all that stuff and you don’t get that senior night, but these guys did tonight and it’s extraordinary and I am so happy for them. It’s actually really humbling because it just doesn’t work like this a lot, but it worked for this crew. I hope that all 18,000 of us in there and everybody that watched it on tv got to see something they’ll never forget because it’s one of those really special moments in sports and it’s not going to be our last.”
“We live in every moment. My whole life right now is in these guys right now. I don’t know about program trajectory. I just know that you can be in this business for 50 years and not get that night. These guys got it. It just makes me happy. The only thing it means for our program is we have got to wake up tomorrow and work our rear-ends off and that’s just the nature of the program.”
“Our guys were fighting… if you want to have a chance to play with the best team America, which I think the Zags are, then you better be dialed in on every single possession. The guys really tried tonight.”
“We can make that transition from frustration to fight really fast. There was so much frustration and things weren’t going right for us in a little bit of a stretch, but our guys are in the process of learning to take that straight to fight. The longer you mess around in frustration, that’s when things get out of hand. We’ve lived in frustration at times in the season and we talk about that all of the time. Is there a bigger advantage in the world than that gym tonight? They fed us all night long. It’s a hard place to visit and play especially like it was tonight. That helped us turn frustration to fight really fast.