BYU at UNLV: Games Notes & Quotes

BYU at UNLV

February 6, 2010

Thomas & Mack Center (Las Vegas, Nevada)

Player Notes

— Jonathan Tavernari shot 7-for-12 for 16 points, adding 7 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 steal.

— Jimmer Fredette added 21 points with 7 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 steals.

— Fredette has had 6 or more assists in 11 games this season.

— With 2 blocks, Noah Hartsock has 11 games with multiple blocks this year.

— Jackson Emery’s 1 steal broke a string of 13-straight games with multiple steals.

Team Notes

— BYU started the game shooting 14-for-14 from the free throw line, including 10-for-10 by Fredette. The Cougars were 12-for-12 at halftime and finished 19-for-22 (.864) for the game.

— Jimmer Fredette had 21 points vs. UNLV, his 16th 20-point game this season and 23rd of his career. He has reached 30-plus points four times this season. BYU is 19-4 when Fredette scores 20 or more and has won 18 of the last 20 games in which he had reached the 20-point mark.

— BYU owns a 145-60 (.707) record as a ranked team. The Cougars are 17-8 (.680) under Coach Rose when ranked, including 8-2 (.800) this season.

Record Watch

— Jackson Emery had 1 steal and has 65 for his career, 2 steals away from breaking the BYU single-season record of 66 set by Marty Haws in 1990.

— With 16 points versus UNLV, Jonathan Tavernari has 1,402 career points, putting him ahead of Andy Toolson for 13th all-time and 7 points away from surpassing Jay Cheesman’s mark of 1,408 points for 12th all-time.

— With 21 points versus UNLV, Jimmer Fredette has 1,273 career points and is 12 points from passing Alan Taylor for 20th all-time.

Game Trends

— BYU held UNLV scoreless over 3:51 in the second half, scoring five unanswered points during the stretch.

— The Cougars held the Rebels without a field goal over 4:11 late in the first half.

BYU head coach Dave Rose

“Tonight all the luck was with the other club. And they were really good. I’ve watched all their games since we played them last and we knew they were playing really well. I thought there were things we could do to cause them some issues, but they shot so well early in the game. When they’re hitting threes they are so much more difficult to guard because they’re such good penetrating players.”

“Offensively we weren’t able to get some baskets. We went too long without being able to score. We forced some things. A lot of it had to do with the fact that they were guarding us pretty well, but we had four or five shots and missed and got discouraged.”

“We’ve done this to quite a few teams ourselves, but this is the first time we’ve played a game like this with this group. Now we’ve got to respond. The last month for this team things have been really, really good. What we need to do is get back to work, get back to practice. What’s discouraging is we don’t play again until Saturday. But it’s one game. It obviously wasn’t our best game but let’s move forward from here.”

“This stings and it’ll be tough and we’ll have to see how respond but we’re nine games into league play and at the top and we control everything in front of us so that’s a good place to be at this time.”

“No matter when the bye comes, you treat it as if it’s the very best time to have the bye because you have no control over it. We need to get ourselves back in a position to where we’re playing better. We can do that with a little work this week.”

BYU forward Noah Hartsock

“It’s disappointing when you get down by that much. UNLV came out hot. They are playing great basketball right now. We got into some streaks here and there, but ultimately UNLV took it away.”

“It’s hard as a player when you see shot after shot after shot go in. You start thinking ‘What am I doing wrong?’”

“The Mountain West is always a great conference. We just have to take care of business on our end.”