BYU basketball: Hold on, move on: Cougars trail at halftime but pull away late

LAS VEGAS — Twice in the past week Air Force has unloaded its full arsenal on BYU, and both times the Cougars have found a way to deflect the best shots the Falcons could fire.

With the Cougars' 80-69 win Thursday over Air Force in the first round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center, BYU (25-6) advances to face the San Diego Aztecs in tonight's semifinals. The win also cements BYU's grip on an NCAA Tournament bid.

"This is a very, very big win for our team," Cougar coach Dave Rose said. "I mean, you want to play as consistent as you can to get yourself in the conversation of being invited to that tournament. You don't want to, at the end of the year, give them any reason or any excuse not to invite you."

Even though the final margin was 11, the Falcons again gave No. 25 BYU all it wanted and were right in the game until the final two minutes when the Cougars finally pulled away. And just like last Saturday's thriller at the Marriott Center when the Cougars clinched a piece of the MWC regular-season title with a victory, BYU again needed a few comeback efforts to get the job done.

"When you consider the last 80 minutes of basketball that we've played, you know, Air Force has been an extremely competitive team," Rose said.

The game featured several momentum changes and several runs. Fortunately for the Cougars, they had a few more runs and runs that were a little bit longer. Also, BYU finished the game with the key final stretch — a 12-4 run over the final 3:52.

"You've got to tip your hat to BYU. They made big plays. Their big plays were made by big-time players," Air Force coach Jeff Reynolds said.

Thursday's game was fairly similar to the one last weekend. Every time it looked like BYU was going to pull away, the Falcons stormed back. And every time it looked like Air Force, which led by seven at one point, was going to get some separation the Cougars mounted a charge. There were 10 ties and 10 lead changes before BYU took the lead for good with two free throws by Jonathan Tavernari with 7:18 remaining.

"When we were able to take the lead there about 11 minutes to go in the game, I thought we put ourselves in a position to possibly sneak one out ... I thought we did a nice job of keeping the tempo the way we wanted it. They just made some hard contested shots," Reynolds said.

One big difference, however, was in 3-point shooting. When the teams met last weekend BYU made only 3-of-22 shots from behind the arc. Thursday they made 9-of-22 from 3-point territory.