BYU weak at hitting foul shots

PROVO — Will BYU hold onto first place in the Mountain West if it continues to miss free throws like the 17 witnessed Tuesday night in a four-point win at Wyoming?

Well, the Cougars might if they step up to the line like freshman Jonathan Tavernari did in the final 1:24 of that win over the Cowboys. Confident, brash, almost cocky, when Wyoming went after the rookie in Arena Auditorium late, Tavernari calmly dumped in six of six in 90 seconds.

And sitting atop the league, it doesn't appear to matter. Yet.

Today the Cougars head to Fort Worth, Texas, where they'll put their first-place MWC standing and five-game win streak on the line against TCU on Saturday.

BYU could use Tavernari's icy self-assurance at the line.

It certainly was not the case for the team at Wyoming. Trent Plaisted went 3 for 10 from the line and is shooting 47 percent on the season. Counting missed bonus free throws, BYU left 20 to 25 more points on the board that night. The team shot 56 percent for the game with a whopping 39 chances.

Even Keena Young, the best free throw shooter on the team, missed six free throws, one of them in the final seconds. Young reacted with an almost embarrassed laugh when he misfired at the line with 31 seconds to play. Young could have scored at least 35 had he converted from the line.

"We did leave some points out there," head coach Dave Rose said of Tuesday's game.

The Cougars stand 18-6 overall and 8-2 in the MWC with wins over ranked Air Force and UNLV within a week's time, and are considered the league's hottest team right now. But the Cougars are also the worst free-throw shooting team BYU has fielded in six seasons with a .653 team percentage.

That dip could be misleading, however. If you subtract Plaisted's attempts and makes from the team total, the season free-throw shooting goes from 65 to 73 percent.

"I think our guys spend a lot of time working on free throws," Rose said. "It's like anything else in this game, it's confidence. Our team as a whole is a very good free-throw shooting team. Trent has struggled from the line and he continues to work at it. It's kind of a game-by-game thing, if you look at it. The first couple of guys step up there and make them, then the rest tend to do the same. We feed off of that."