Cougars surge past Broncos in second half, Haws climbs to second

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PROVO, Utah – Senior Tyler Haws climbed to second on BYU’s scoring list while leading BYU men’s basketball over Santa Clara 78-57 at home Saturday night in the Marriott Center.

"I think our guys went in with a little uncertainty with our lineup and played hard," BYU basketball coach Dave Rose. "I'm really happy for the guys. I hope it's kind of a turning point for us. We had two of our bigs, one with nine rebounds, one with 8 rebounds in limited minutes. That was a big key for us tonight, to be really aggressive." 

Haws scored a game-high 21 points to go along with four assists and three rebounds. Skyler Halford added 13 points, seven assists and five rebounds, while Chase Fischer finished with 18 points, going 5 of 9 from deep.

Anson Winder chipped in 13 points, four rebounds and two steals and Ryan Andrus added five points and a career-best eight rebounds. Isaac Neilson pulled down a game-high and career-high nine rebounds off the bench.

Haws made the first two BYU (17-7, 7-4 WCC) buckets of the game with his second putting him passed Danny Ainge for second place on BYU’s all-time scoring list. Santa Clara (11-12, 5-6 WCC) got out to a 12-6 lead, but was answered by a big 19-3 BYU run over seven minutes that included five triples as the Cougars surged ahead 25-15 with 8:18 left in the half.

Eight of BYU's last 10 points of the half came from the free throw line with the lone field goal come on a Winder drive to the rim at the 4:20 mark. The Cougars entered halftime up 35-29 with Haws leading all players with 12 points. Fischer followed with nine points on 3 of 4 shooting from downtown with Andrus adding five points and four rebounds. 

The Broncos made the first bucket of the second half to cut their deficit to four at 35-31. After Haws’ jumper, the next eight field goals by BYU were from beyond the arc as the lead ballooned to 23 at 61-38 with 11:22 remaining in the game. Six of the triples came during an 18-0 run as Winder, Halford, Frank Bartley IV and Fischer all connected from deep.

With 6:50 remaining in the game, Haws’ floater gave BYU its largest lead of the game of 27 points, 71-44. Maintaining its lead, BYU took the game 78-57, while holding SCU to a 34.4 shooting percentage and outrebounding the Broncos 45-37.

The Cougars hit the road to take on Pepperdine on Thursday at 8 p.m. MST. The game will be televised live on TWC and broadcast on the Cougar IMG Sports Network on KSL Newsradio 102.7 FM/1160 AM.