BYU vs. Santa Clara Notes & Quotes

BYU vs. Santa Clara Game Story

BYU vs. Santa Clara Box Score

BYU vs. Santa Clara Facebook Photo Gallery

Player Notes

Tyler Haws

Haws finished with 21 points 4 assists, 3 rebounds and 1 steal as he passed Danny Ainge for second on the BYU career scoring list. Haws passed Ainge on a turnaround jumper at 17:42 in the first half. He now has 2,486 career points – 113 behind Jimmer Fredette for first.

With his 21 points, Haws also passed David Vann, Forrest McKenzie, Rick Raivio and Terrell Lowery for 6th on the West Coast Conference only scoring list and is just four points away from Hank Gathers for the most overall points in WCC history.

Haws' double figure game was the 111th of his career. It was the 67th career 20-point game and his 8th consecutive. His 67 20-point games is tied with Michael Smith for the most in BYU history.

Haws passed Devin Durrant in career field goals made for 4th with 834. He also passed Fred Roberts for third in minutes played with 4,072.

Chase Fischer

Fischer scored 18 points on 5 of 9 shooting from 3-point range as he added 2 rebounds and an assist. He passed Nick Sanderson and Andy Toolson for 3-pointers made in a season as he now has 75 for the 7th most in a season at BYU. It was also 6th game with five 3-pointers which is tied with Jackson Emery for the second most in a season.

Anson Winder

Winder totaled 13 points, 4 rebounds, 2 steals and an assist. He was 3 of 4 from 3-point range.

Skyler Halford

Halford scored 13 points and added a team high 7 assists, 5 rebounds and a steal. His 7 assists tied his season and career high.

Ryan Andrus

Andrus tied his career high in points with 5 and set a career high in rebounds with 8, including 5 offensive boards.

Dalton Nixon

Nixon finished with 3 rebounds, 2 blocks and an assist in his first career start for BYU.

Isaac Neilson

Neilson pulled down a career-high and team-high 9 rebounds and a steal.

Frank Bartley IV

Bartley played a season-high 17 minutes as he finished with 3 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, a block and a steal.

Team Notes

Halford, Winder, Haws, Nixon and Kaufusi started together for the first time for BYU. It was also Nixon's first career start. BYU is now 1-0 with that starting five.

Haws, Halford, Winder and Fischer scored in double figures, while Halford led the team in assists with 7 and Neilson led the team in rebounds with 9.

BYU shot 51.7 percent from 3-point range on 15 of 29 shooting after going a combined 6 of 35 the previous two games. At one point, the Cougars hit five straight 3-pointers as Halford, Haws, Winder, Halford again and Winder knocked down treys. As part of that run, over an 8 minute stretch all of BYU's points came off 3-pointers, BYU was 8 of 10 from three from 18:30 - 11:24 in the second half. The Cougars extended their lead from 6 to 23 during that time.

BYU is now 14-0 when outrebounding its opponents this season.

Runs

A 19-3 run with a 10-0 spurt helped the Cougars take a 25-15 lead with 8 minutes left in the first half. Fischer scored 9 points during the run, Haws added 5, Winder 3 and Halford 2.

An 18-0 run came exclusively from behind the 3-point line as Winder and Halford hit two each, while Bartley and Fischer added one. BYU led 61-38 with 11 minutes left.

Quotes

BYU head coach Dave Rose

"I think sometimes your team plays really hard because your team is playing well. Then there are those times when your team is playing really, really hard, then because of that you start playing well, you start making shots. I think that's what happened tonight. I think our guys went in with a little uncertainty with our lineup and played hard. We didn't get out to the best start int he world, but they were playing hard. 

On Haws passing Ainge:

"Tyler got us off to a good start, got those two baskets early so he could put that whole issue to bed early. That's a whole thing in itself. That's amazing. It will probably hit him sometime this weekend. That's quite an accomplishment. I'm sure he has one more in his sights."

Rebounding: 

"I hope it's kind of a turning point for us. We had two of our bigs, one with 9 rebounds, one with 8 rebounds in limited minutes. That was a big key for us tonight, to be really aggressive. We wanted someone other than our guards going for rebounds. We need to get back to playing our bigs and playing more physical. Hopefully it's a step in the right direction. I thought we competed on Thursday at times, but I thought tonight it was a very consistent effort. I look forward to next week's practice to see what we do."

Practice:

"I think a lot of the focus the last few weeks, these guys have stayed after it, we haven't really gotten a consistent big. I believe 100 percent that it's from the way we practiced the last few days. They practiced really well this week and it showed up in both of these games." 

Changes in lineup:

"I told the guys going into tonight that it feels to me like a game in the middle of November, maybe the first of December. I didn't know how it would play out tonight. There were going to be a lot of guys getting a lot of chances, so take advantage of this."

3-point shooting:

"The last two games it really was a struggle. Tonight, we missed our first couple then Chase came in and hit three in a row. The thing that was really important to me was to see if we could hit one in the second half. I think we were 0 for 6 against San Diego and 0 for 7 against San Francisco. You have to hit that first one before everyone kind of knows that's what's going on."

Tyler Haws

Moving up on all-time scoring list:

"It is a cool thing. You look back on those guys' careers and those are the guys you grow up wanting to be like. It's amazing to have my name up there with those guys."

"It has surpassed my expectations. I didn't know what I was walking into at BYU. I wanted to be the best college basketball player I could be and try and fulfill my potential and try to work hard every day. I've loved every second at BYU."

"Hopefully we can build on what we did tonight. I thought we had a better mindset. Our intensity was better. In most of our losses, rebounding was one of the main issues. We definitely brought it tonight in that aspect. Guys really rebounded well on both ends of the floor. Hopefully we can keep building." 

"It was nice to see a few 3-pointers go in tonight. Everyone in that locker room is committed to sharing the ball and shooting the right shots and making the extra pass."

Skyler Halford 

3-pointers:

"They were dropping for us. We got in a good rhythm. I thought it was because of our defensive effort and rebounding."

"We got guys penetrating and kicking and we got big rebounds from guys like Ryan and Isaac to lead the breaks and that just helps us when we can get stops and get out on breaks."

"When shots are falling, everyone wants to get one and everyone thinks it's going down."

On team depth:

"We have guys top to bottom who can produce and who can come in and give us a lift."

Defense and rebounding:

"These past couple weeks our number one focus has been rebounding. I think we're finally starting to get where we want to be. This homestand helped us out. San Francisco was a little tough but this game I feel like we accomplished what we wanted to as far as defense and rebounding goes. Hopefully we can keep that intensity during practice this upcoming week leading in to the Pepperdine game."

On Tyler Haws:

"What can you say? He's an amazing worker. I've known him since he was young and he deserves all the credit that everyone gives him because he's an amazing basketball player. I'm super proud of him and happy for him. He's not one to say anything about it. He's such team guy."

Ryan Andrus

"It's been our whole focus the last couple games. We've struggled rebounding. Without Kyle, our leading rebounder, our number one key to win was to rebound. Coming in, my whole focus was to rebound and I made that happen. Rebounds were coming my way tonight."

On his increasing minutes:

"It's very gratifying. It starts in practice. Just being able to showcase what you can do. I think I can attribute a lot of my game to rebounding and that's what we needed tonight. Being able to come in and rebound, I think I'll start seeing some more minutes hopefully."

On Tyler Haws:

"He's always in the gym getting up shots. I couldn't be more proud of him tonight."

"We need to do a better job of communicating in transition. We didn't do a good enough job of that tonight and they took advantage of it."

"You have to do a good job of defending threes and they have four guys that can shoot the ball. We didn't do a good enough job of communicating and they made us pay for it."

On Jared Brownridge's early foul trouble:

"It was huge. It was a bad call. It's not the type of call that should be made in a game that should be that physical, especially with really good guards. It changes everything. We played him with two fouls in the first half, but when you have to score and establish yourself early and you have a guy like that out. It doesn't change anything, it just makes it harder to establish what you need to get established early on."

"We were fortunate to be down six at halftime with his limited minutes but obviously it didn't make a difference in the second half."