BYU basketball: Cougars fall to Kansas State 84-72

OKLAHOMA CITY — In the NCAA Tournament, big leads come and big leads go.

Unfortunately for the BYU Cougars, the big lead they had early in Saturday's second-round battle with Kansas State disappeared quickly, but the one the Wildcats took into halftime didn't.

However, what did disappear with Kansas State's 84-72 NCAA Tournament win at Ford Arena were BYU's hopes of playing in the Sweet 16 later this week at EnergySolutions Arena.

"We were able to get past the first round finally and, you know, we ran into a really good team tonight," BYU guard Jimmer Fredette said. "They just played a little bit better than we did. All the credit to them."

The reasons Kansas State was able to erase BYU's 10-0 run to open the game up became more obvious as they became more effective, but they were still challenging for the Cougars to stop. Kansas State is advancing and BYU is not because the Wildcats' inside-out game was more than BYU could defend, the Wildcats' ability to own the boards gave them too many opportunities to score, and Kansas State's ability to keep Fredette from getting to the basket basically nullified the Cougars' main scoring threat.

"They were really, really good defensively, which caused us to kind of hurry up a little bit and turn over, and not shoot the ball as well as we normally do," BYU coach Dave Rose said. "But all the credit goes to Kansas State for how well they played."

Fredette did score a team-high 21, but 10 of those points came from the line late in the game. He was only 5 of 13 from the floor and 1 of 4 from 3-point range, and he turned the ball over five times. Kansas State was able to force those numbers on BYU's top scorer by the physical manner in which they guarded him the minute he crossed the midcourt line.

"They're an aggressive team defensively," Fredette said. "We knew they were going to get up in us, and they started double-teaming me even in the backcourt, and as soon as I got over half court. I was trying to get it to my teammates and have them be aggressive as well."

On the other side, the Cougars had no answer for Kansas State's powerful backcourt duo of Jacob Pullen and Denis Clemente, who scored 34 and 19 points, respectively. Pullen hit seven 3-pointers and was a perfect 11 of 11 from the line. Most of Clemente's baskets came when BYU was trying to mount a comeback.

"We just really had to key in on our defense, and we got comfortable on the offensive side and got the shots we wanted to really control the game," Pullen said.