Cougars pull away to make it 10 of 11
It’s hard to gauge the talent on USF’s men’s basketball team, which is young and will experience growing pains this season.
But say this for the Dons: They play an entertaining brand of hoops on the Hilltop.
USF lost its top player, Charles Minlend, to a shoulder injury and started three freshmen and a sophomore in Thursday night’s WCC home opener.
But the Dons stayed close most of the evening with surging BYU, which has won 10 of 11, and provided spurts that left a not-so-packed crowd encouraged. But in the end, a more polished BYU won 6959.
Second-year coach Kyle Smith was awakened in the wee hours by the 4.4 earthquake that rocked the Bay Area. Smith lives across the street from War Memorial Gym and had trouble getting back to sleep.
“And then I had BYU to worry about,” Smith said. “That’ll keep you up, too.”
The Dons (9-6, 1-2) trailed most the night before pulling into a 44-44 tie and taking their first lead at 53-51, but watched the Cougars (13-3, 2-1) run away with it down the stretch.
Without Minlend, the lone Don on the preseason AllWCC team (he’s redshirting), other players are getting opportunities to contribute more. One is freshman guard Souley Boum out of Oakland Tech. He had been averaging a team-high 15.6 points per game, though he settled for seven Thursday.
USF’s top scorers were Matt McCarthy, who did his best to overcome BYU’s big men and score 16 points, and Chase Foster, who came off the bench to score 14. The Dons were challenged with 6-foot-9 Taavi Jurkatamm limited to 11 minutes because of an illness.
“We had a good rhythm going in the middle of the game,” McCarthy said. “You’ve got to make plays down the stretch if you want to win.”
The Dons were buried 23-10 before rallying behind McCarthy, who scored eight points and made a nifty backdoor pass for another basket in a 13-1 run. Suddenly, they were down 24-23 with 4½ minutes left before halftime.
BYU answered with the play of the night when TJ Haws drove the lane and lobbed to Yoeli Childs for a power dunk. The play ignited a strong first-half finish by the Cougars, who went into intermission leading 33-26.
Most of the second half, the Dons found themselves pulling close — three times, they trailed by one — only to watch BYU extend the lead. Finally, the Dons got even at 44-44, thanks to an energized Nate Renfro, who scored seven straight points: a threepointer, layup and dunk.
The Dons took their first lead on back-to-back threepointers by McCarthy (his first outside shot of the night) and Jordan Ratinho, making it 53-51 with 8½ minutes to go. BYU scored 18 of the final 26 points.