Red-letter day — Utes overcome horrid start to beat Cougars

Saturday's battle at the Huntsman Center had everything you'd expect from a Utah-BYU matchup — sold-out arena, a little trash-talking from both sides, technical fouls by each team's top scorer, timeouts galore and a few midcourt conferences between officials and coaches.

Oh, and it turned out to be a pretty good ball game, considering that everyone assumed the league champion Utes would steamroll over the Cougars, who had embarrassingly lost their last two games by a combined total of 50 points.

The Utes spotted the Cougars a large first-half lead before relying on a couple of their patented second-half runs to secure a 69-60 victory before 15,014 fans. The win moved Utah to 24-4 on the season and 12-1 in Mountain West Conference play, while BYU fell to 9-19 and 3-10.

The Cougars surprised the nearly all-Ute crowd by hanging tough most of the game. They led most of the first half and kept it close enough that the Utes couldn't take out Andrew Bogut and Marc Jackson until just 12 seconds remained in the game.

Bogut had his usual big numbers with 26 points, 13 rebounds and three steals, while Jackson dished out a career-high 11 assists and aggravated the Cougars with his defense. But the key Ute Saturday afternoon was 6-5 sophomore Justin Hawkins, who scored a career-high 21 points on 10 of 12 shooting from the field.

Hawkins scored 17 second-half points, including a timely 3-pointer and three consecutive dunks during a 90-second span to lead Utah's second-half rally.

BYU was led by sophomore guard Austin Ainge with 17 points and six assists and Mike Hall with 12 points.

Even though they had clinched the Mountain West Conference title exactly a week earlier in Colorado, the Utes celebrated after the game as they have done so many times over the past decade.

The coaches and players were awarded the MWC trophy at midcourt and then the players took turns cutting down the net on the west basket while "We are the Champions" blared in the background.

"It's really special," said Ute coach Ray Giacoletti. "Their hard work was rewarded today and it was so nice they could do it in front of a packed house."

The Utes had gotten off to a horrible start, missing nine straight shots after a Richard Chaney basket on the first possession. Meanwhile, BYU was playing nothing like an 18-loss team, racing out to a 20-9 lead 12 minutes into the game.

"They hit some tough shots early, to their credit, and we panicked a little bit at the offensive end of the floor," said Giacoletti. "We got impatient offensively."