Dick Harmon: Can BYU guard Matt Carlino continue his comeback?

Matt Carlino crawled out of a deep, dark pit with his heroic career-high 30 points in BYU's one-point win over San Francisco Thursday night.

Leading up to that performance, Carlino was playing in a spider web. For seven games, many of his long shots were ricocheting off the rim like melon rinds at a park trash bin. It was uncanny how they'd lip out, ring out, clang off the side or sometimes even miss things with physical mass.

For a shooter, that's like being a dentist without a drill or Kim Kardashian without a cameraman.

"I was due," Carlino told reporters after he took the game against the Dons into his own hands with 20 seconds to play and hit the game-winner with a drive and lefty floater.

"They owed me," he said.

Who?

"The Basketball Gods."

Shooters live and die with their stroke. When it's on, it feels like magic. When it's not, you have to keep firing with no conscious regret or memory of the misses.

That's what Carlino's been doing the past month when his 3-point accuracy has hovered between 11 and 17 percent with a pair of 1-for-7 nights from that distance.

Before his performance against the Dons, he had gone 4 of 34 from 3-point land. That calculates to 11 percent. He made 4 of 6 (.667) in the first half at SF.

Carlino's 30 points Thursday night is the most points by a Cougar freshman in 14 years. Only three other freshmen have scored over 30 for BYU: Mark Bigelow, Mekeli Wesley and Danny Ainge. As a team, 30 points was the most since Jimmer Fredette dumped 32 on Florida in the NCAA Tournament in New Orleans a year ago.

Carlino has 244 career points as a Cougar freshman heading into Saturday's game. Fredette ended his freshman season at BYU with 244.

The impressive thing to me was how Carlino simply decided to put on the alpha dog collar and bark.

He marked his territory faster than a runaway cable car.

He saw daylight and didn't hesitate.

Carlino is a talented guard, but he does have a gunner's attitude. It's in his nature.

When he stepped on the court with that attitude, despite playing with two of the WCC's best two post players in Noah Hartsock and Brandon Davies, Carlino took it on himself to make something happen.