Complete effort: Cougars secure outright title by dominating Utes

PROVO — For BYU, it was another regular-season storybook ending — only this time, there were no last-second heroics necessary.

The Cougar football team's 33-31 victory over Utah last November was much more dramatic, but the 85-62 drubbing of the Utes Saturday in front of 22,812 fans at the Marriott Center was just as historic for the basketball program.

"You couldn't have drawn it up any better," said guard Austin Ainge, one of five BYU seniors who played at home for the last time. "You beat the Utes by 23 points on your homecourt. This was a huge win for us and our program."

How huge?

The victory gave BYU an outright conference championship for the first time since 1987-88; extended its nation-leading homecourt winning streak to 31 games; marked its first outright titles in football and basketball since 1978-79; and lifted the Cougars to their first regular-season sweep of their arch-rivals since 1994.

No wonder, going into the contest, there was no shortage of motivation for BYU.

"We had something in front of us that we wanted," said senior forward Keena Young, who scored 15 points. "We had a conference championship on the line. We didn't want to share it with nobody. We had to go and get it."

To heighten the emotions, the five Cougar seniors were introduced to the crowd during a pre-game ceremony.

"I had worries about a lot of emotions our players were going to have to deal with," said coach Dave Rose.

Utah players and coaches, meanwhile, were dealing with other kinds of emotions in wake of Friday's announcement that coach Ray Giacoletti will step down at the end of the season. The Utes came out strong in the opening minutes and led 20-17 midway through the first half.

"I started off a little jittery. A lot of us did," Ainge said. "We settled down and started playing our game. When that happens, not too many people can play with us."

"We handled the emotions of the night and we were able to stay together," Rose said. "Utah really came out and played well early in the game and put a lot of pressure on us. Then we kind of found ourselves and did a good job of controlling the tempo."

The Cougars finished the half outscoring the Utes 20-6 to take an 11-point advantage into the locker room at intermission. During that stretch, BYU knocked down three 3-pointers and added a traditional 3-point play courtesy of Ainge, who stole a Shaun Green pass, raced downcourt for a layup and drew the foul.