Kyle Terada

Men's Basketball By WCC Columnist Jeff Faraudo

BYU Flexes Its Muscles Over LMU

LAS VEGAS - BYU strengthened its case for the NCAA Tournament on Friday night, and now gets the chance to add to that resume.

The fifth-seeded Cougars (22-9) won for the fifth time in their past six games, easily dispatching LMU, 85-60, in their University Credit Union West Coast Conference Tournament opener at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas.

All-WCC senior guard Alex Barcello scored 22 points in just 26 minutes and freshman Fousseyni Traore contributed 15 points and 11 rebounds (his eighth double-double) for the Cougars, who will face No. 4 seed San Francisco (23-8) in a 7:30 p.m. quarterfinal game. BYU and the Dons split two games during the regular season.

“We’ve done a great job of having edge when we step out on the court. It’s March and that’s what you’ve got to do,” Barcello said. “Playing with edge is what we’re preaching right now.”

Senior Eli Scott scored 24 points for the eight-seeded Lions (11-18), but didn’t get anywhere near the help his teammates provided the night before in an 88-66 win over Pacific.

The Cougars were simply too good while pocketing their sixth straight win over LMU. They shot 54 percent from the field, scored 19  points off 11 LMU turnovers and outrebounded the Lions, 44-25, to claim a wire-to-wire triumph.

Defensively, they couldn’t stop Scott, whose effort put him over 2,000 points in his career, but they mostly defanged the rest of the Lions.

Joe Quintana, who tied a WCC Tournament record with eight 3-pointers in a 31-point performance the night before, didn’t get untracked until after BYU had built a 20-point margin. Shadowed much of the night by Barcello or Spencer Johnson, Quintana scored 12 points but he was just 2-for-8 in the first half the night after he was 6-for-6 on threes in the opening 20 minutes.

With the victory, BYU gets a great chance to add to its credentials. Saturday night will show off the WCC’s depth of quality teams in a Quad 1 neutral-site game where the Cougars will take on a USF squad that was No. 26 in the NET rankings on Friday.

BYU coach Mark Pope is excited for Saturday night. “I think our guys are in a good place right now. They’re super hungry,” he said. “They’ve got some fire and there’s not a lot of fear right now.”

Jerry Palm of CBS Sports has the Cougars as a No. 11 seed in his NCAA bracket projection while ESPN’s Joe Lunardi shows them as one of the first four teams out of his field of 68.

The Cougars hope to give the WCC four teams in the NCAA field for the first time ever, joining top-ranked Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s and USF, all considered locks to be selected a week from Sunday.

LMU coach Stan Johnson gave his endorsement to the Cougars.

"They’ve got everything,” he said. “They’ve got size, they’ve got shooting, they’re got terrific guard play, they rebound the ball extremely well and they’ve got good shot-making. This is a team if they get in the NCAA Tournament, they can advance. They’re absolutely an NCAA Tournament team.”

DEFENDING QUINTANA: Pope was ecstatic with the defensive work done on LMU’s sharpshooting guard Quintana. The night after he made eight 3’s, Quintana connected just once from deep against the Cougars.

Barcello said the plan was to stay on top of Quintana and try to run him off the 3-point line.

“This Joe Quintana against a really good defensive team just put on a show yesterday,” Pope said of his game vs. Pacific. “We were extraordinarily concerned about that and Alex had that assignment solo to start this game and I thought the tone he set was unbelievable.”

Barcello shared the credit with Johnson, a 6-5 sophomore, who took long turns chasing Quintana. “I thought Spencer did a phenomenal job,” Barcello said. “He’s got such a high IQ on the defensive end.”

GREAT SCOTT: A fifth-year senior who played high school basketball with LaMelo and Lonzo Ball, Scott finished his LMU career with impressive numbers. With 24 points against the Cougars, he boosted his five-year total to 2,012. He also grabbed 909 rebounds and dished 444 assists.

He joins Richmond’s Grant Golden as one of two active Division I players with career totals of at least 1,900 points, 900 rebounds and 400 assists. Only five players in the past 30 seasons have achieved that status.

After his final college game, Scott lamented never making it to the NCAA Tournament. “Obviously it’s a very humbling thing to have the accolades but I don’t really have much to show for it,” he said. “In the grand scheme of things, I really didn’t win anything in my five years at LMU. I’d trade all those points for one tournament appearance.”

But Johnson, who became LMU’s coach before last season, said he was grateful for what Scott provided.

“The impact Eli has had here, he’s had a really good career,” Johnson said. “This year we felt like if things all went our way and we stayed healthy, we had a group maybe that could fight to sneak into the NCAA Tournament. That didn’t happen. That shouldn’t take away from any accolades he’s had, what he’s meant to the program.”

Johnson said both Scott and Quintana will leave LMU with graduate degrees. 

“In this era of transfers, anytime you take over a program, which I did in maybe the hardest time to take over a job with the pandemic, Eli and Joe didn’t have to stay at LMU. At most places, guys like that leave,” he said. 

“That tells you about them and their character. These guys are really good people and guys that are going to be very successful. And they’re going to be part of the reason why LMU basketball becomes really good.”

STAT OF THE GAME: BYU toppled LMU’s defensive game plan by scoring 48 points in the paint. “I told our team before the game if I had to live with anything I wanted to live with protecting the paint,” Johnson said. “If they made enough threes tonight to beat us, we’d shake their hands. It was the opposite. You’re not going to beat anybody who makes 48 points in the paint.”

QUOTE OF THE GAME: “San Francisco’s a great team. They’re huge and they’ve obviously got a very skilled backcourt. You think of them at 6-11 and 6-11, vertical and super strong. They’re big and explosive and they’re veteran.” — BYU coach Mark Pope on Saturday’s opponent