The early BYU strategy looked like it came from the Air Force playbook — foul like crazy and hope the officials only catch about half of them. Unfortunately for the Cougars, the officials were seeing everything and the Utes got into the free throw bonus less than seven minutes into the game. Before the night was over, three Cougars had fouled out as they piled up 28 fouls, compared to 14 for Utah.

Utah had taken eight foul shots before it made its second field goal of the game with 8:27 left in the first half. Slowly, the Utes chipped away at the lead and pulled within four at 23-19 on a coast-to-coast drive by freshman Jermaine Calvin, who started in place of injured Tim Drisdom.

After the play there were shoves and words exchanged, and BYU's Ainge and Utah's Bogut were whistled with technical fouls. A replay on the Ute scoreboard showed Ainge pushing Marc Jackson after the play, then Bogut rushed in with a few words for Ainge.

For the rest of the game, Ainge was booed incessantly by the Ute crowd, which had been on Chris Miles' case since he was the guy who drew a technical in the Provo game for kicking Bogut.

BYU pushed the lead back to seven at 29-22, but Utah scored seven straight to end the half, with Chris Jackson scoring inside, Bogut getting a three-point play and Bogut scoring with his left hand after making a big steal at the other end.

In the second half, Utah jumped out to a quick five-point lead, but Hall's 3-pointer cut the margin to 40-38. Then came the key stretch of the game.

With just five seconds left on the shot clock and the ball under the Utah basket, Marc Jackson fired a pass to the right corner to Hawkins. He sank the 3-pointer smoothly, his first of the season after 17 straight misses, to make it a five-point game again.

Bryant Markson, who came back from a knee sprain to play 29 minutes, hit a jumper and Bogut followed with only his second 3-pointer of the season and a layup off a feed by Calvin and the lead ballooned to 12 at 50-38.

The Cougars hung tough and cut the lead to five at 56-51 with 7:26 left on back-to-back 3-pointers by Terry Nashif and Balderson. But Chaney hit a jumper and a pair of free throws to push the lead to nine and Ute free throws finished off the Cougars.

GAME NOTES: The Utes have one regular-season game left Saturday against San Diego State before heading to the Mountain West Conference Tournament the following week. BYU plays UNLV at home Saturday night . . . Utah's win was its 16th straight at the Huntsman Center, which is the eighth longest in the nation . . . The win boosted Utah's edge in the all-time series to 122-117 . . . Utah has won 12 straight games against BYU in the Huntsman Center. The last Cougar win came in 1994 on Robbie Reid's last-second jumper . . . Utah ranks No. 3 in the nation in rebound margin but only outboarded the Cougars 26 to 24 . . . Calvin earned praise from Giacoletti after getting three steals and three assists in his 23 minutes . . . Utah shot 78.9 percent in the second half after going just 40.9 percent in the first half.

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