Jake Toolson leads BYU surge in holding off fired-up Southern Utah

PROVO — BYU survived a hot, shooting speedster, a hair-on-fire shooter they had no answer for in holding off Southern Utah 68-66 in the Marriott Center Wednesday night and it took two new heroes on Mark Pope’s squad to make up the difference.

SUU guard John Knight III sprinted past and around BYU defenders all night en route to 22 points on 9 of 14 shooting, all of them twos.  He got Cougar defenders on his hip and finished at the rim while BYU lost a 10 point first-half lead and trailed by four late in the game.

But Jake Toolson’s eight straight points, including a 25-foot bucket from downtown with 34 seconds left, elevated the Cougars to a comfortable 66-62 lead and Alex Barcello’s free throws and steal of Knight’s rebound in the closing seconds polished off the Thunderbirds.

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BYU was lucky to beat SUU, which shot 50% from the field, all inside the paint over a height-impaired Pope squad.

In the end, Knight wasn’t enough and BYU’s 3-pointers were.  Toolson led BYU with 22 points and his leadership and post-up ability in crunch time proved the Cougar answer in the win.

Dalton Nixon, who scored 13 points with 7 rebounds, had blood leaking out of a wound under his left eye in the first half, and it was symbolic.

With Yoeli Childs sitting the first third of this season on the bench as a cheerleader, Nixon has been called upon to play both center and forward. He did make two 3-pointers, but his main job is to present some kind of muscle for the Childs-less Cougars in the paint.

This disparity was evident in SUU’s charge and second-half lead. BYU could not defend the block or score inside. SUU didn’t make a shot from beyond the arc because it could score on dribble penetration and simply beat BYU to the rim without fear of a backend defender at the bucket.

Pope will have to get used to this until mid-December and at the Maui Invitational at Thanksgiving time.

There was a strange series just before the half when Haws scored three consecutive 3-pointers and only one of them counted. 

At the 2:27 mark of the first half with BYU up 31-23, Haws took a 27-footer with five seconds left on the shot clock only to have it waived off because the shot clock had stuck on five seconds. He’d likely have made his shot with time remaining, but it had stuck and technically, that was a correctable technical error, even to the point disallowing the bucket.

After a timeout, officials put two seconds on the shot clock and Haws made a leaner bank shot from the same distance.  Officials conferred after an official time out and waved it off after reviewing the shot clock did not start properly, allowing him too much time for his dribble, move past a defender and made the bomb. After SUU scored on the other end, Haws made his third straight attempt and the only one that counted. 

He ended the half with 10 points but had kind of scored 16.

Haws never scored another point. SUU took over momentum just before the half with a flurry of buckets, then continued after intermission to out-play BYU. Haws was never the same. He also got a fourth foul in frustration and sat out a huge chunk while the game turned ugly with both teams unable to score for a long stretch, the game stuck on 54-53, BYU up by one.

In a sense, it was unfair to Haws. All he could do is play the court with the clock he saw and he did and scored two dramatic bombs on two straight tries within seconds.  The game can become very complicated if you go back on field goals during a game and look at the TV and the clock and make an adjustment with resets and do-overs. Haws won the do-overs but lost out on the scoreboard.

SUU deserved credit for scaring BYU on its home court. Andre Adams had 12 points and Harrison Butler 11 and the Thunderbirds outboarded BYU 38-31 and held a 46-22 advantage in the paint scoring. SUU’s bench outscored BYU’s 35-8.

How does SUU stack up after beating Nebraska in Lincoln in overtime earlier this year?

USA Today’s Jeff Sagarin has Utah State 23rd, Utah 48th, and BYU 51st. SUU is No. 230, Weber State is at 232 and Utah Valley 273rd in the country.

It didn’t look like that kind of disparity Wednesday night in Cougarland.