Preparation for close finishes finally pays off for Arizona men's basketball in win at BYU

PROVO, Utah — When Arizona staffers pulled chairs far out onto the Marriott Center court with a one-point lead and 12 seconds left Monday, having called a timeout in an effort to help stop the bleeding, the seat was hotter than Brayden Burries might have ever felt before.

Winning your first 20 games by an average of 22.2 points can do that to you. A close game? Really?

En route to an 86-83 win over No. 13 BYU on Monday that gave them a school-record-tying 21-0 start, the Wildcats had really only had one truly down-to-the-wire game. They won 71-67 at UConn on Nov. 19, but even in that one they held the ball with a two-point lead on the final possession.

This time, the Wildcats led by 13 points at halftime, by up to 19 in the second half, and even by 10 entering the final minutes …. but kept sliding to the point where a rebound basket from BYU's Keba Keita cut UA’s lead to just 84-83 with 16 seconds left.

They hadn’t seen this kind of movie before. Or had they?

“We go over scenarios like this a lot,” Burries told the Star afterward. “I feel like we just practice so hard, it feels like games, honestly. When he called the time out and he's talking to us, it really just, like, it felt like practice.

“So it was just going through that scenario, then we got the stop and got the win. That was the main part.”

Except when head coach Tommy Lloyd talked to them this time, it was for real. Behind their chairs at that late huddle was 5,000 or so roaring BYU students, and in the rest of the building were another 13,000 or so Cougar fans joyously cheering as the No. 1-ranked team in the country nearly melted down.

All that made it “a little bit" different, Burries conceded, and pulling out the win was also probably more difficult than the freshman made it sound.

Because that “stop” he referred to was his lunging block of BYU guard Robert Wright III, who might have hit a shot giving the Cougars a one-point lead if Jaden Bradley didn't defend Wright closely as he drove toward the basket and Burries didn’t bat his shot away.

The move was surprising enough that even the stat crew initially assigned the block to UA center Motiejus Krivas, who, at 7-foot-2, is the sort of guy you might expect could do such a thing.

Nope, it was the 6-4 Burries, racing over from the right wing to bat away Wright's shot after he drove down the left side of the lane.

Then, after Wright was forced to foul Burries when he took possession of the ball, Burries hit both ensuing free throws for the final score. He finished with a career-high 29 points, surpassing the 28 he scored on both Alabama and Kansas State.

“Brayden came up with a big time defensive play, then got the rebound and made two free throws," Lloyd said. “It's a big time finish for us."

The finish was enough, just enough, to help the Wildcats overcome a near-disastrous final minute in which:

— Burries fouled a 3-point shooter and was called for a flagrant foul.

— Bradley was called for an offensive foul and turned the ball over another time.

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— Wing Ivan Kharchenkov turned the ball over underneath the BYU basket.

“It felt like everything at the end kind of went against us," Lloyd said. "Our guys have competitive character, and hung in there and found a way. But that easily could have gone the other way."

Lloyd questioned when no call was made against Bradley in one situation, then noted that BYU “made a nice play” stripping Kharchenkov of the ball when he held it over his head — and said Burries’ flagrant was a result of simply trying to foul the guy who picked it away, BYU’s AJ Dybantsa.

Replays appeared to show Burries grabbing Dybantsa by a shoulder to toss him toward the floor, and officials initially called it a flagrant 1 foul for unnecessary contact. The officials then reviewed it to see if it was actually a Flagrant 2 foul, which the NCAA defines as a move judged to be “brutal, harsh, cruel, dangerous or punishing.”

Lloyd indicated he didn’t exactly look at it that way. He said the game had  “great officials” but wondered if it was just how they were applying the rules, which are stricter now against above-the-shoulder contact.

“I don't know what happens in some of these reviews,” Lloyd said. “I mean, come on, it's a good basketball play. You're not trying to hurt a guy. You’ve literally got an All-American player, point blank. What are you supposed to do? Get out of the way and let him dunk it on you?

“I mean, c’mon guys, we all played basketball growing up. You foul. You foul, and you can't give up an and-one (basket and a foul) or your coach is going to yell at you.

"It's just tough. It's just tough. It's tough.”

Even though officials left Burries' foul as a flagrant 1 foul, that still meant BYU had the ball and two free throws with 37 seconds to go, with Arizona up by six.

Dybantsa hit both free throws, cutting it to four and 21 seconds later, after Bradley was called for an offensive foul, Dybantsa missed a 3-point attempt that Keita rebounded and put back in to make it 84-83.

A turnover from Bradley followed with 12 seconds left, giving BYU a chance for a go-ahead bucket, and that's when Lloyd called his timeout.

All those scenarios in practice, finally, had become reality.

“I just wanted to kind of see what they're setting up and talk to our guys,” Lloyd said of the timeout. “If we lose, I didn't want to have that in my back pocket and then regret not giving our guys a little bit of a plan. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.”

This time it worked. Arizona is 21-0, and a win Saturday at ASU will give the Wildcats their best start in school history.