Nov. 14, 2007
Final Stats
Provo, UT --- Sam Burgess scored 16 of his 18 points in the first half as Brigham Young raced out to a 23-6 lead on the way to a 90-69 win over Idaho State, keeping the Bengals winless against the Cougars in Provo in the Division I era and extended the nation's longest home court winning streak to 32 straight.
Idaho State (0-2) hadn't defeated the Cougars in Provo since December of 1939, when the Bengals were a junior college and two years before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The game marked the second straight slow start for the Bengals, as Iowa bolted out to a 13-4 lead in ISU's opener on Friday. The Bengals started the game shooting just 1-for-10, and by the time Matt Stucki hit a three-pointer, ending a streak of 18 straight missed threes, it cut BYU's lead to 17-6, but the Cougars (2-0) quickly scored six more to make it 23-6.
The Bengals, down 44-25 at the break, made a pretty strong push in the second half, and cut the lead down to 14 at 55-41 after the second of back-to-back Chron Tatum baskets, but the Cougars went on an 11-2 run, capped by a Jimmer Fredette three, and it pushed the lead to 66-43, and the two team basically traded baskets after that.
Chron Tatum had his second strong game for the Bengals with a career-high 20 points and six rebounds, and Amorrow Morgan had a career-high 13 points in just 21 minutes. Matt Stucki also hit double-figures with 10 points, and Scooter Maye came off the bench and dished out four assists. For the Cougars, Burgess led all BYU players with 18, and Jonathan Tavarnari and Trent Plaisted each had 17. Lee Cummard added 13 and Jimmer Fredette added 10 for the Cougars, who shot 12-for-25 from three-point range. After ISU went 1-for-20 against Iowa from three-point range, the Bengals went 5-for-14 on Wednesday night.
"I think the next four games on our schedule, even the next five, are a lot more winnable that maybe this one," said head coach Joe O'Brien. "I still feel like we gave one away at Iowa, and maybe that's just the competitive part of me."
O'Brien added, "Offensively we showed that we can play better, we shot 57% in second half and that's a real positive that we can take into these next few games."
Idaho State now heads to Long Beach State to finish their season-opening three-game road trip with a 5:05 pm Mountain Time tip-off.
NOTES: Steve Anderson saw his first action for the Bengals, playing four minutes and picking up a rebound ... ISU was outrebounded, but only slightly at 33-31 ... the Bengals, who played the seventh toughest non-conference schedule in the nation last year, are now 0-11 in non-conference road games the last two years.
