BYU basketball: Y. overwhelms discouraged Southern

PROVO — As well as the BYU Cougars have played early on this season, they've still had a few quirks in need of fixing.

Most of that received a repair job Tuesday in BYU's blowout win over the Southern Jaguars at the Marriott Center. But, realistically, it's hard to find anything lacking when your team wins by a margin of 107-51.

"That's probably the best performance we've had so far this year," BYU coach Dave Rose said. "We shared the ball really well. We played at a good tempo. Our shot selection was good. We had 42 baskets and 27 assists and everybody scored. Our two point guards led our team in assists, 10 assists for Jimmer (Fredette) and seven for Lamont (Morgan Jr.). That's a good way to play."

The tired Jaguars, playing the fourth game of a five-game western road trip, were no match for BYU's up-tempo offense, quick ball movement and fast-hands defense. Southern's 56-point loss on Tuesday comes on the heels of a 40-point loss at Utah last weekend.

"We just seem to not have the energy and the get-up-and-go about ourselves," Jaguars coach Rob Spivery said.

Cougar guard Jackson Emery, with another hot-shooting night from downtown, scored a game-high 16 points by hitting 4-of-6 from 3-point range. He also added five steals. Jonathan Tavernari had his second straight good-shooting game by hitting 6-of-12 shots in scoring 14 points.

Perhaps the biggest gain for BYU (4-0) in the lopsided win, however, was the break-out game of senior center Chris Miles. Through three games he had made only 2-of-6 shots but hit 6-of-8 on Tuesday to also score 14 points.

"Those are the types of numbers that we're accustomed to with Chris," Rose said.

Fredette added 12 points for the Cougars, but five of his 10 assists came on BYU's first seven baskets. He also had four steals, three assists and no turnovers in only 18 minutes. Charles Abouo led BYU's 46-point effort off the bench with 11.

"Every minute you get out there is another minute you can use to get better as a team," Abouo said of BYU's heavy use of bench players in the second half.

The Jaguars actually led 6-5 until Emery drilled back-to-back threes and Miles added a 2-and-1 to put the Cougars up 14-6. From there it steadily got worse for Southern as the Cougars forced turnovers, scored in transition and connected from deep. In the first half alone the Cougars scored 25 points off of turnovers in taking a 57-22 lead into the locker room.

"That just shows that defensively we were engaged the whole 20 minutes," Rose said.