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MORGANTOWN -- BYU returned to the Coliseum for the first time since 1947 on Saturday night but they looked little like the team that West Virginia beat on that long ago evening.
In fact, this was not BYU at all. It is now 3YU, coming to town armed with sharpshooting gunslingers from the outside. The 3-point shot is their brand, their trademark and they were firing off nothing but bullseyes as they beat WVU, 86-73, in a game that was fun to watch, unless you had a ticket to sit on the Mountaineer bench.
In all, the Cougars from Provo, Utah, shrugged off the three and a half hours they spent in the air as they showed why they are ranked No. 21 in the country and among the top 3-point shooting teams in the nation while the top 3-point shooting team in the Big 12.
They made 13 of 36 3s, good for 39 points.
But there was another ingredient to their game in this one, an unexpected performance from their backup center when their talented inside man Aly Khalifa turned up sick before the game.
It looked like that would make a mismatch inside for Jesse Edwards, as Fousseyni Traore was forced to start. He stood 6-foot-6 but played 7-foot-6.
By the time the night was over he owned the paint in the Coliseum, as well as 24 points on 10 of 15 shooting with 9 rebounds, 6 of them off the offensive boards, 3 assists a steal and 2 blocks.
Edwards, playing with a healing broken wrist, just couldn't handle him and admitted it to himself, his teammates and the media.
"I know I'm a lot better than this," Edwards said. "Knowing that, in that way, I kind of let my team down, because I'm a lot better on defense than what I showed tonight."
Edwards is, of course, still rehabbing the broken wrist that kept him out 5 weeks and playing with tightly bandaged.
On this night nothing short of a sledgehammer was going to stop Traore.
"He was obviously very strong with his right hand," Edwards said. "All credit to him for this game. He made it very tough on me and Pat (Suemnick). He played a really good game. He's strong."
His play allowed 3YU to show just what their offense really is set up to do.
There were the 39 points from 3, but also 38 points in the paint.
It was you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't for WVU. The Cougars were uncoverable and that's just what the offense is set up to do.
"It's something we've worked on all season, but we've taken it to the Nth degree right now," BYU coach Mark Pope said. "Philosophically, it's really important that we try to stretch teams and make them guard 27 by 50 feet. Most teams make you guard 21 by 50 or 18 by 50. That's about 250 more feet. With our skill set, we need to work hard to continue to make teams guard in space."
The dilemma was noted by Battle.
"It's difficult, because you just can't go double off of (Steph) Curry-like 3-point shooters," Battle said. "We just have to take more pride in one-on-one opportunities and make them score over us."
Traore may have been the most important player on the court but the play of the game belonged to guard Richie Saunders.
3YU had opened up a 17-point lead in the second half but WVU chipped away and was starting to really gear up with the crowd noise deafening as they cut it to five points, 70-65, with 6:26. They then had a strong defensive stand with the ball going off Edwards' thigh with just 2 seconds left on the shot clock.
As the officials looked at the replay to set the clock, 3YU came up with a miracle play, inbounding the ball deep behind the 3-point circle, Saunders grabbing it and letting it fly with no waste of motion … but also with no idea where the ball was going.
It was arcing high and obviously too strong but, as the shot clock buzzer went off the ball hit off the backboard and fell through the netting like he meant to do it that way.
That put a damper on the comeback and even though WVU got a basket from Kriisa and a pair of free throws from Battle, the momentum was gone and the lead widened.
"We were down 17 and we were fighting and clawing," WVU head coach Josh Eilert said. "A couple of those miraculous 3s were daggers for our team's confidence when you're trying to make a run and especially as late as they did make those shots."
"That was a fun game," said 3YU guard Spencer Johnson, who contributed 3 of the 3s, but took 11 shots to do it. "It was awesome, a tribute to our resiliency, our maturity as a team. We hit the shot we needed to hit and got the stops we needed. It was fun."
WVU has a week off before going away for two road games at Texas and Iowa State They go there with an 8-14 record and no victories away from the Coliseum this sea