BYU women's basketball: Cougars falter in final home game

PROVO — Playing in their final regular-season home game, BYU seniors Shawnee Slade and Cassie King both turned in memorable performances as they rallied their team from a 12-point halftime deficit against Wyoming.

But in the end, it wasn't enough.

While Slade and King combined to score 27 points in the second half, the Cowgirls edged the Cougars, 57-55, in overtime Wednesday night at the Marriott Center.

BYU's Coriann Wood missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer in OT that would have propelled the Cougars to victory.

"I thought when Cori took that shot it was in," said Cougar coach Jeff Judkins. "But it didn't work for us tonight."

With the win, Wyoming improved to 16-12 overall and 8-7 in the Mountain West Conference. The Cowgirls also pulled ahead of BYU (17-10, 7-9) in the league standings.

King finished with a career-high 20 points (17 in the second half) to go along with 12 rebounds. Her basket with six minutes left in regulation gave BYU its first lead since midway through the first half, then her three-point play with 29.8 seconds left sent the game into overtime.

Slade scored 16 points before fouling out with about one minute remaining in regulation. She drilled a pair of big 3-pointers in the second half to help pull the Cougars back in the game after trailing 30-18 at halftime.

"Cassie played a really great game tonight; both her and Slade played great on Senior Night," Judkins said. "It was great to see them play like they can."

Losing Slade late in the contest "really hurt us," Judkins said.

"It was torture," Slade said of fouling out. "I wanted to be out there so bad with my team. It was difficult for me."

The Cougars dug themselves a big hole in the first half after After taking a 9-2 advantage early on, BYU watching the Cowgirls go on a 26-5 run. In the second half, the Cougars roared back.

"For whatever reason, they weren't ready to play in the first half," Judkins said of his players. "I thought we had many, many opportunities to win this game. We played a horrible first half, then we came back in the second half and played more aggressively ... We had open looks and we had plays we should have made at the end."

BYU shot 26 percent in the first half and nearly 50 percent in the second.

"We were playing catch-up the whole second half," Slade said. "The team did a great job of coming back and coming together. But we just fell short."

Wyoming's Emma Langford came off the bench to score a team-high 13 points while Hillary Carlson chipped in 12. Guard Megan McGuffey pulled down a game-high 17 rebounds.

For Slade, the loss was difficult to swallow.

"It's obviously not what I wanted," she said. "It's really discouraging. But we have to build off this. The season's not over."

The Cougars finish the regular-season Saturday at Air Force.

E-mail: jeffc@desnews.com