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PROVO, Utah – Anson Winder led BYU men's basketball to a 77-71 overtime win against UMass Tuesday afternoon at the Marriott Center.
"I've said this before after really hard-fought wins – this is really special," BYU head coach Dave Rose said. "This is a real team victory for us. Our guys, from top to bottom, battled through a game that was really difficult for us to get into any kind of rhythm. We just never really got that flow in here that we seem to get at times. We were able to make a few plays late and win the game. I think we can build on our last non-conference game as a team going into what's going to be quite an interesting and competitive conference season."
Winder led the Cougars with a career-high 25 points to go along with five rebounds. Kyle Collinsworth ended with a double-double of 18 points and a season-high 15 boards to go with a team-high four assists. This was his second-straight game with a double-double. Chase Fischer and Skyler Halford each neared double-digit points with eight.
The Minutemen (6-6) got the first points of overtime with a 3-pointer to give them a 65-62 lead early on. A Collinsworth shot got BYU (10-3) back within a point at 68-67 and a pair of Winder shots from the charity stripe gave the Cougars their first overtime lead at 69-68 with 1:54 left in the game.
A Corbin Kaufusi dunk off a pass from Frank Bartley IV got the crowd going with under a minute remaining in extra time, forcing a UMass timeout with BYU up 71-68. Two more free throws from Winder extended the Cougar advantage to five at 73-68. Halford closed out the game for BYU with four striaght from the charity stripe, giving the Cougars a 77-71 overtime win.
Fischer hit a 3-pointer to start the game against UMass. The Cougars were ahead for the first five minutes of play until a trey from the Minutemen's Trey Davis put his team up 11-9 early on.
Rose took his first timeout of the half after a transition layup capped off a 12-0 run for UMass, giving it a 16-9 advantage. After the break, BYU went on a 7-0 run in 50 seconds of playing time, which included a Dalton Nixon steal and quick jumper from Halford to tie the score at 16 apiece.
The two sides traded points from there with back-to-back jumpers from Collinsworth knotting the game at 24-all before a pair of Halford free throws put the Cougars back up at halftime 32-30. Collinsworth led BYU at the break with a near double-double of 10 points and eight rebounds.
Tyler Haws scored his first points of the game and the Cougars' first points after halftime to tie the score again at 34-34. The Minutemen followed with three-consecutive turnovers, leading to five-straight BYU points and a UMass timeout with the Cougars ahead 41-36.
A quick transition layup play for the Minutemen capped off a 9-0 run that gave UMass a 45-41 edge. A Winder 3-pointer sparked a 7-2 BYU spurt that put the Cougars back up 52-51 in the tightly-contested game.
Buckets went back-and-forth again from there with UMass' Donte Clark hitting a jumper at the shot clock buzzer with 1:22 left to give the Minutemen a 61-60 edge. Collinsworth then scored a pair from the charity stripe to bring BYU ahead by a point with a minute left in the game.
In the closing seconds of regulation, the clock stopped for UMass with 2.4 seconds left after a Cougar foul. The Minutemen's Maxie Esho hit 1 of 2 from the free throw line to tie things up at 62 apiece. BYU couldn't score with 1.1 seconds left on the clock, sending the game into overtime.
The Cougars return to the Marriott Center Saturday at 4 p.m. MST to begin conference play against No. 8 Gonzaga. The game will be broadcast live on ESPN2, BYU Radio and the Cougar IMG Sports Network. Links to live stats can be found on the BYU men's basketball schedule page.