BYU basketball: 1 and done — again

PHILADELPHIA — The Texas A&M Aggies clearly have BYU's NCAA Tournament number.

It happened last March when the Aggies raced out an 11-0 lead en route to a first-round win over the Cougars, and it happened again in Thursday's rematch at the Wachovia Center as the Aggies came out of the gate making 10 straight shots in shooting down the Cougars' tournament hopes one more time 79-66.

"When our guys are dialed in, which they were today, we're pretty good," Texas A&M coach Mark Turgeon said.

The Cougars have now lost eight straight NCAA Tournament games overall and seven straight in the first round. The past three seasons the Cougars have been knocked out of the first-round game as a No. 8 seed.

"Well, I think that we need to play better," BYU coach Dave Rose said.

Thursday's game was another early uphill climb for BYU, and the hole was too deep and the slope too steep to recover from once again.

"I think that we played a really good team tonight, Texas A&M. I think we had opportunities in this game like we've had in, you know, past NCAA games, and we just didn't make enough — take advantage of those opportunities and ended up on the short end of the stick," Rose said.

After Jackson Emery opened the game with a 3-pointer on BYU's first shot, the Aggies responded with quick buckets inside from forward Bryan Davis and center Chinemelu Elonu to take the lead for good. That was just the beginning of an 11-0 run in which the Aggies hit three shots in the paint and two outside jumpers — one a 3-pointer — to vault in front 11-3.

"They did a good job of getting open shots, and their big guys were making, you know, tough shots in the beginning of the game," Cougar sophomore Jimmer Fredette said. "They just continued to play from there."

Following Emery's game-opening trey, the Cougars then missed six straight before Fredette stole the ball and raced in for a layup. A short jumper by Chris Miles cut the lead to 14-7. But eight more in a row for Texas A&M, which included two jumpers by Davis, and the Aggies were up 22-7.

"We were trying to figure out different things we could do to try to get them into a tough shot," Rose said. "I thought a couple of shots they made were very difficult shots, actually shots that we probably going into the game would want them to shoot. But they came out with a lot of confidence and made those shots."

In stretching that lead to 26-8, Texas A&M scored on 12 of its first 16 possessions, made 10 straight shots, and on the first miss Davis grabbed the rebound and put it back in. When Davis dunked in an alley-oop pass to give the Aggies a 32-16 lead, they were 14-of-16 from the floor.