PLAYER NOTES
Nick Emery scored BYU’s first field goal of the game for the fifth time out of six games this season. Dating back to last year, Emery has hit a 3-pointer in 15-consecutive games. He hit five 3-pointers on the night, a new season high.
Emery’s 20 first-half points tied a career high set last year – his previous high this season was 13 in the last game against Valparaiso. He ended with a game-high and career-high tying 37 points, passing the 30 point mark for just the third time in his career.
Kyle Davis registered one block. He has now had a block for the fourth-straight game and fifth time in six games. Davis finished the game with 11 points.
L.J. Rose pulled down a team-high five rebounds in the first half and finished with a team-high seven to go along with six assists.
TJ Haws tied his career high in assists with five in the first half. He finished the game with seven to lead the team.
Eric Mika ended the game with 22 points. This was his third 20-plus point outing of the season. He has scored in double figures in every game this year.
TEAM NOTES
BYU started the game with the same lineup as it has in all five previous games: Nick Emery, LJ Rose, Eric Mika, Kyle Davis and TJ Haws.
The Cougars trailed at the half for the first time this season, 54-52. The 52 BYU points tied a season high for most in a half. The 60 points scored by Utah Valley in the second half were the most the Cougars have allowed by an opponent in 20 minutes of play so far this year.
BYU outscored the Wolverines in the paint 58-36. The Cougars shot 47.4 percent from the field compared to 52.9 percent for Utah Valley.
The Wolverines' 18 3-pointers were a Marriott Center record.
QUOTES
Opening statement
I think that we’ll start with a congratulations to Coach Pope and his team. They came in and played as well as any team I can remember coming in here and shooting. They played on attack, aggressive, with confidence and we had a really difficult time slowing them down. We got flustered. A real issue with our team in the last two games is composure. That is a real challenge for a young team. We’re a young team with a lot of expectations. First in-state game that they’ve been in. They didn’t understand the intensity or consistent urgency of this game. I thought Nick and Eric combatted that but not as well as we needed to. The rest of the guys were really affected by the intensity and urgency of the game.
On getting ready for Wednesday
It’ll be interesting to see. Such a new group with new guys; confidence is so fragile. We lost a close game the other night and then had some guys come in who didn’t play well at all. A lot of that has to do with what UVU was doing tonight, but we need guys who can consistently perform at the level we need them to perform at. We need to find a group that can play better together than we did tonight.
On carry over from the loss against Valpo
I don’t know. The real carry over was confidence. UVU had a lot of confidence from their comeback win the other night and you can ride these waves pretty well. They have a core group of guys that are really capable who can have a big game every night. So, I think the momentum from that game carried over into this game for them.
On where things went wrong
Just from the beginning. UVU made a lot of threes, and I give them a lot of credit.
On the message from Rose in the locker room
We've got to care. We've got to get better. We've got to improve every day, but we’ll build from this and play better next week.
On where to go from here
You go up and you win. We’re going to turn this thing around.
On going back to the fundamentals
When you give up 100 points, yeah, you've got to go back and get down to the fundamentals on defense. We need to play with more excitement and energy. We have a great coaching staff that’ll help us do that.
Opening statement
We played embarrassingly. Our effort, our defense. Overall embarrassing. I have nothing else to say about it. UVU is a great team. They are going to win a lot of games. Right now we’re just embarrassed.
On where to go from here
It’s a long season; this is only our second loss. We still have 30 more games to play.
On going back to the fundamentals
We just need to be tougher. We can’t put this jersey on out there and think we’re going to win just because we are BYU.