BYU basketball: Cougars playing like team we expected

For perhaps the first time this season, BYU basketball looked like what we’d expected them to, sporting a balanced offensive attack, inside and out. They used it to down Colorado 79-71 Saturday night.

And at last, the outside shot fell for BYU basketball.

Think of the potential of this BYU basketball team like a chest with many locks. It needs a bunch of keys to open it up all the way.

In most games, the Cougars had the keys of inside scoring and rebounding. But someone left the ones for defensive rotation in their other jacket. Other games, they could open up in transition, attacking the basket. Unfortunately, someone jammed the ball security key halfway in, and it wouldn’t turn.

Nobody had seen the key for 3-point shooting since last year. Maybe Chase Fischer took it with him. They succeeded in prying that lock open now and then, but BYU basketball had to strain and press. The results weren’t ideal.

Well, Chase must have sent it back via international mail, because for the first time all season, everything opened up for the Cougars.

Chris Nicoll-USA TODAY Sports

Following in the tradition of Jimmer, Tyler Haws, and Kyle Collinsworth before him, Eric Mika is now the offensive powerhouse that demands almost constant hounding and double teaming when the ball is in his hands. This means someone should be open on almost every offensive possession.

If the other big man comes over, well, they’re in trouble. Yoeli Child’s, Kyle Davis, and Jamal Aytes have consistently punished them for it. But when help came down from the perimeter, and the ball was kicked to an open guard, typically they pulled on their master stone mason aprons.

Laying bricks left and right.

But finally, the long ball fell. After shooting near the bottom of the NCAA from beyond the arc, the Cougars nailed 9-of-19 against the Buffs. TJ Haws hit 4-of-5 from deep, and his passes sparkled with golden rainbows. Add to that a defense seldom seen since the Princeton game and some spanking on the boards, and Cougars earned their best win of the year.

Colorado threatened time and time again. The Buffaloes took a lead at 58-55 with 11:43 left in the game. If this had been other games, the Cougars might have let it slip.

Instead, they handed the ball to Mika. The double came, Mika passed it out, and Steven Beo nailed a three to tie it up. The Buffs responded with a three of their own to retake the lead, but Haws hit another deep one in transition. No masonry to be found.

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Colorado did not play poorly. They simply couldn’t cope with a BYU basketball team that had all the keys.