BYU basketball: Cougars' defense dominates the Rams

PROVO — Heading into their Mountain West Conference tilt against Colorado State on Saturday, the BYU Cougars knew that the Rams could be a dangerous offensive team.

After all, the Rams averaged 76.5 points per game in winning their opening conference games over Wyoming and Air Force, and in point guard Dorian Green and forward Andy Ogide, they possessed two players capable of giving BYU fits.

Those two, along with the rest of the CSU team, were indeed tough for the Cougars to handle early on Saturday afternoon, but then the Cougars put the clamps on defensively.

BYU's defense smothered Colorado State the rest of the way and the end product was a dominant conference victory. BYU held CSU without a field goal for over 10 minutes between the first half and second half before eventually winning 91-47.

"When you play D, you gotta have heart," said BYU forward Jonathan Tavernari, who had four steals to help lead the Cougars' defensive charge. "I think the first few minutes of the game, we let them hang around too much. They're a great team and they deserve all the credit in the world. Like I said, any given night in this league, anybody can go anywhere and win a game.

"They're a really good team, but we did a tremendous job defensively. We just needed to step it up a notch."

Midway through the first half, that's precisely what the Cougars did.

Following Travis Franklin's jumper with 8:07 left in the first half, BYU didn't allow CSU to make another basket until the 18:02 mark in the second half.

Nearly four more minutes elapsed before the Rams made their next field goal and, with BYU's offense kicking it into high gear at the other end of the floor, the game was over.

For the afternoon, BYU held CSU to just 31.4 percent from the field and forced the Rams into 24 turnovers - with nine of them coming via steals.

BYU coach Dave Rose singled out the defensive play of BYU's big men (Chris Miles, Brandon Davies, Noah Hartsock and Tavernari) during the Cougars' late first-half run, and he feels the depth his team has down low has given the Cougars an added advantage this season.

"I think one of the things that's really helped us defensively is the depth in the post," said Rose. "It seems like we've always had foul issues in the past, and we kind of (got) a little softer or a little smaller.