BYU Gets Revenge Over Weber State To Earn 10th Win Of Season

PROVO, Utah – The nation and advanced analytics are starting to take notice of BYU basketball’s early-season success. After one week off, BYU returned to action on Saturday night against an in-state foe, Weber State.

In only their sixth home game at the Marriott Center this season, BYU cruised to a 91-61 victory over the Wildcats, who now drop to 1-7 against Division 1 competition this season. BYU is now 10-4 overall with one game remaining in non-conference play.

Final: @BYUbasketball 91, @WeberStateMBB 61

Yoeli Childs ends up with 28 points. A total of five players scored in double-figures for #BYU. #BYUhoops #WeAreWeber

— KSL Sports (@kslsports) December 22, 2019

Any game that takes place at the end of a week consumed by finals is always tricky for college hoops teams, but BYU passed with flying colors because of their hot shooting. As a team, BYU shot 62.5 percent from the field and 47.4 percent from the three-point range.

Yoeli Childs led the way for BYU with 28 points and had eight rebounds on 11-13 shooting from the field in 29 minutes of play. In his fourth game back since serving his nine-game suspension from the NCAA, BYU’s offense was in rhythm all evening.

A total of five players scored in double-figures in the win. The only one that didn’t was senior guard TJ Haws who chipped in nine points, dished out eight assists and pulled down five rebounds. Two of Haws’ points came on a slam dunk late in the 2nd half before exiting the game with BYU up by 32 points. To which Yoeli Childs said in the postgame was the best dunk he’s ever seen.

TJ Haws dunk alert!

— Mitch Harper (@Mitch_Harper) December 22, 2019

“I thought Yoeli was really, really solid,” said coach Mark Pope. “As a coach, [I] jump right to the negative. He had three turnovers in the first half. But what I was most impressed with Yoeli was his ball screen and ball first defense was unbelievable; his transition defense was really solid all night.”

Childs usually starts in the frontcourt alongside Kolby Lee. Lee was out on Saturday with an injury he suffered earlier this week in practice. Pope is hopeful that Lee will be back next week, but in replace of Lee was Dalton Nixon.

Yo checks out with 28 and 8

Cougars lead 82-53 with 4 minutes to go#BYUhoops #GoCougs pic.twitter.com/2DMNJXEh81

— BYU Basketball (@BYUbasketball) December 22, 2019

“We miss Kolb, Kolb’s been really good for us and that has nothing to do with Dalton. Dalton’s been a star all year long, but just in terms of the depth,” Pope said. “But you know what, Zac Seljaas gets more minutes tonight and he played great. I like having the full quiver of arrows and hopefully, we have Kolby back soon … Dalt was fantastic as he always is and it was a good group effort.”

This was a revenge game for BYU as last season the Cougars had a head-scratching setback at the Purple Palace of the Dee Events Center, 113-103. Getting revenge was on the minds of players who went through that game a season ago.

“I think that’s a big part of how we responded to start the game,” Dalton Nixon said. “This whole week of preparation, we’ve been thinking about them. They dropped 113 points on us at their place so it was a huge emphasis to contain Jerrick Harding, who went off tonight, he’s a really good player, but we just came with the mentality that this is a big game for us and we had a lot to prove to ourselves. So I thought we did a good job of being able to bounce back from what we did last year.”

Next Up

BYU has one game remaining in non-conference play when they host Oral Roberts next Saturday in the Marriott Center. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. (MST).

Mitch Harper is a BYU Insider for sports.ksl.com and host of the Cougar Tracks Podcast (SUBSCRIBE) and Cougar Sports Saturday (Saturday from 12-3 pm) on KSL Newsradio. Follow him on Twitter: @Mitch_Harper.