BYU basketball: Cougar women crushed by Aztecs in semifinals

LAS VEGAS — The BYU women's basketball team, in splitting this year's regular-season series with San Diego State, never looked overmatched by the Aztecs in either contest.

In Friday's Mountain West Conference tournament semifinals, however, they sure did. After beating the Aztecs by 10 points in January at the Marriott Center, and then losing by only two on the road in February, the No. 2 seed Cougars were blasted out of the Thomas & Mack Center by the Aztecs, 77-47, on Friday afternoon.

Unless the Cougars get a bid to the WNIT, their season is over.

"Well, I'm not real happy," BYU coach Jeff Judkins said after the lopsided loss. "This wasn't the kind of game I wanted to have our team play tonight.

"You (have) got to give San Diego State a lot of credit. I think they came out very aggressive defensively and kind of set up our offense, did a good job of getting turnovers to make easy baskets. We just didn't execute the way we should have early in the game."

Even though the Cougars took an early 4-0 lead, this game belonged to the Aztecs quickly after they responded with a 10-0 run that seemed to send the Cougars into panic mode.

"It seemed like we kind of got punched first and we didn't react the way we wanted to," BYU guard Jazmine Foreman said. "It might have shook us up a little bit."

The Aztecs steadily widened that lead to reach 19 points with 5:20 left in the opening half. They shocked the Cougars by dominating the paint, getting to the free-throw line at a steady pace, and then combining those two forces with timely outside shooting.

"I couldn't be prouder of how I felt we kind of took a step back and really executed as well in the halfcourt (Friday) as we have through the balance of the season," Aztecs coach Beth Burns said. If the Cougars had any chance of mounting a comeback, that hope was dashed in the final seconds of the first half. With a 12-3 run, BYU actually cut the gap to 39-29. But when San Diego State's Quenese Davis (18 points) was left wide open in the right corner with 18 seconds left in the half, she buried the shot to push the margin back to 13. Then, after BYU's Coriann Wood missed a 3 of her own, Aztec guard Coco Davis was fouled in the backcourt with two seconds left, and she hit both charity tosses to give San Diego State a 44-29 lead at the break.

"I think that really hurt us," Judkins said. "I think it's kind of like climbing up a hill, you get almost to the top of the hill, you're going to grab the last ledge, you slip and fall down 10 ledges."