Ainge takes blame for Y. loss

SAN DIEGO — BYU senior guard Austin Ainge took full responsibility for the Cougars' loss at San Diego State on Saturday afternoon in Cox Arena.

As the game unfolded, Ainge lost the handle on the ball and on the Cougar offense, and San Diego State rocketed to a 22-4 lead and coasted to an 86-74 win.

Even so, Ainge was surprised the Cougars didn't match SDSU's intensity on this road trip, the first for the Cougars as a ranked (No. 21) team.

"Yes, I was surprised. I take full responsibility. We can't win when I have six turnovers and we start off the game like we did," he said. "That is a good team that is playing really well. We can't let a team like that get started."

The Aztecs got 12 steals on 19 Cougar turnovers to race to a convincing 43-25 halftime lead. It was the largest deficit the Cougars had faced all year, and the 25 points was the fewest by the Cougars in a half. The 57.7 Aztec shooting percent was also the highest allowed by the Cougars all season. Nobody had ripped off an 18-0 run on the Cougars like SDSU did in taking a 22-4 lead to start the game.

"They've been playing well the last couple of weeks, better than when they played us (earlier)," Ainge said. "We knew they would play hard, and we didn't meet their intensity. Even when we made a run and came back, they kept hitting them."

The Cougars hit 8 of 9 from beyond the arc late in the game and cut the Aztecs' lead to just nine points at 81-72 on a 3-point shot by Ainge with about a minute to play.

But with chants of "overrated, overrated," ringing out of the arena by the SDSU crowd, the Cougars were too far behind to make up the difference.

Ainge said the Cougars will need to put this game aside and get onto Air Force.

"We have a conference championship on the line, and we have a lot to play for," he said.

Before the Cougars' loss, the MWC had three teams in the top 20 of RPI rankings, including Air Force (11), losers at TCU, UNLV (16) and the Cougars (20).

BURGESS SPARK: Sam Burgess came off the bench to score seven points, grab two rebounds and have two steals in 21 minutes, but he acknowledged the Cougars were playing out of a deep hole. "When you are on the road and playing a team like San Diego State and have turnovers, it's hard to stop their runs. We knew if we cut down our turnovers, we could get back in the game. But we just had too many," said Burgess.

AZTEC PUNCH: The SDSU crew got 57 points from Brandon Heath and Mohamed Abukar, who took the majority of Aztec shots.

The sellout of 12,414 was fifth sellout of Cox Arena in school history. Students were wearing "Beat BYU" T-shirts, and a pair of male students were dressed up as LDS missionaries, wearing bike helmets and backpacks.

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E-mail: dharmon@desnews.com