From Deseret News archives:

Oral Roberts undone by foul trouble

Published: Saturday, Dec. 30, 2006 12:27 a.m. MST
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PROVO — In what has been a season of polarizing ups and downs for the Oral Roberts men's basketball team, day two of the BYU Holiday Classic proved to be another one of the downs.

One day after a clutch 76-74 win over Seton Hall, with the chance to win consecutive games for just the third time this season on the line, the Golden Eagles could not overcome stretches of inconsistency and foul trouble Friday night in a 72-62 loss at the hands of host BYU.

The Golden Eagles held a lead of eight points in the first half and 10 points in the second half, but saw both leads rapidly collapse under relentless comebacks by BYU.

Keena Young collected his fourth double-double of the season for BYU, leading the team with 21 points and a career-high 16 rebounds. When the Golden Eagles went up by 10, Young responded by scoring nine straight points for the Cougars inside a 16-3 run that gave the Cougars the lead for good.

As has been the story for the Golden Eagles all season long, forward Caleb Green (21 points) and guard Ken Tutt (24 points) were dynamite, but got little help from teammates in the loss.

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"Teams know me and Caleb will come out and score a lot of points, so they're going to try to stop us," Tutt said. "When they try to stop us, the other guys on the team have got to step up and knock down shots or get rebounds or do whatever else it takes for us to get the win."

Foul trouble played a hampering role on the Golden Eagles throughout the game. Marchello Vealy, the team's third-leading scorer, came off the bench early and picked up a pair of quick fouls, and saw limited action the rest of the game before fouling out with 3:55 remaining and his team trailing by two.

But it was the loss of Green, who fouled out on an offensive foul with 4:39 left, that really hurt Oral Roberts, which was outscored 13-5 after Green's departure.

"It's hard for us to win games on the road with our best players on the bench in foul trouble," said Oral Roberts coach Scott Sutton.

The foul trouble caused Sutton to switch to a zone defense, which was unfamiliar terrain for the team and the reason to which Sutton attributed BYU's 19-6 advantage on offensive rebounds.

"Part of that is we had to go to zone to protect our big guys, and we've played 99 percent man-to-man this year," Sutton said. "We haven't practiced (zone) a bunch, and I thought (BYU) hurt us on the offensive glass in the zone."

Oral Roberts concludes its part of the BYU Holiday Classic today at 5:30 p.m. against Liberty.


E-mail: jtwitchellx@desnews.com

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