BYU basketball: Cougars make most of time at the line

LAS VEGAS — Dave Rose wanted to emphasize free-throw shooting this season, and he nearly watched his team pull off a perfect performance from the charity stripe in BYU's 110-104 shootout victory over the University of Nevada on Tuesday at the Orleans Arena.

Six BYU players, led by Jimmer Fredette's 9-for-9, were perfect from the free-throw line as the Cougars canned 27-of-28 shots overall with the clock stopped.

It's one thing to shoot 11-of-12 or 16-of-17 from the line in a game. But taking 28 trips and missing just once is a feat. BYU shot 11-of-12 in the first half (91 percent) and made all 16 attempts in the second half for a game total of 96.4 percent.

Nevada coach David Carter was impressed.

"You don't see that (27-of-28) very often, but they made their free throws when they had to," Carter said. "That was a big factor in the game."

BYU entered the game ranked No. 4 nationally in free-throw shooting with a 78.6 percent mark. Tuesday's effort boosts the Cougars to 80.5 percent on the season as a team, which should move them ahead of national leader USU by one percentage point.

It was the fourth-best team effort in school history, with previous BYU teams going 12-for-12 twice and 10-for-10 three other times.

Freshman Tyler Haws made all six of his, Jackson Emery went 4-for-4, Noah Hartsock and Brandon Davies made both their attempts and Michael Loyd, who is from Las Vegas, converted his single trip to the line. Only Chris Miles missed a free throw and he was 3-of-4.

The Cougars exploded for 64 points in the second half in a game in which Nevada scored 54 in the second half without making a 3-point shot after going 6-of-8 from beyond the arc in the first 20 minutes.

Fredette led all scorers with 33 points and six assists. He went over 1,000 career points with 10:04 left in the game on a shot that put the Cougars up 78-70. He now has 1,010 career points, the 41st BYU player to reach the 1,000-point bench mark.

"They made a lot of big plays," said Nevada star forward Luke Babbitt, who had 20 points in the game. "They forced us into doing some things we didn't want to do. Credit them, they are a very good basketball team."

It was a crazy game with the Wolf Pack shooting a blistering 59 percent from the field and losing by six. The Cougars shot 63 percent from the field after opening the game with 80 percent accuracy in the opening five minutes on Haws' perfect 6-for-6 shooting.

"We thought they'll cool off," said Wolfpack center Dario Hunt. "But they never did."

"One or two plays can make the difference and they had spurts that killed us," said Babbitt.

Free-throw accuracy was a priority, said Fredette.

"Our free throws have been really good for us this year. Where it wasn't that good a year ago, we've really worked on it this year, and all the hard work we've put in has made a difference," said Fredette.

"We shoot them a lot in practice and put ourselves in pressure situations to make them in practice. It worked for us tonight."

e-mail: dharmon@desnews.com