Credit No. 17 BYU's improved defense for 96-92 win over Iowa State. No, really

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Curtis Jones was on an absolute heater.

The Iowa State senior from Minneapolis shot 8-of-12 from the field, including six 3-pointers, for 22 points for the Cyclones en route to a 53-49 halftime lead. Jones connected on 6-of-9 from the arc, added a couple of buckets in transition, and supplied two assists and two steals to help Iowa State overcome a 10-point deficit to lead by 4 at the break.

If it hadn't come against him as a primary defender, BYU's Trey Stewart would have loved watching it. Even as such, he was still impressed.

"He was cooking. I can't lie," Stewart said. "It was fun to watch. He's a good dude. It was fun to play against especially, so I love that defensive challenge."

For Stewart, who rotated in defending the Cyclones' hot hand on a team missing a pair of starters in Tamin Lipsey and Keshon Gilbert, the challenge was simple: stop the 16.3-point scorer with the nickname "CuJo," or at least slow him down.

He had help in top defender Mawot Mag. But again, it wasn't going to be easy.

And yet it worked, as the 17th-ranked Cougars held Jones to 9 points on 3-of-10 shooting with just one 3-pointer in the second half en route to a 96-92 win Thursday afternoon at the T-Mobile Center that clinched a spot in Friday's Big 12 tournament semifinals against top-seeded Houston (5 p.m. MDT, ESPN2).

Having fun yet?

"I said fun to watch in terms of fun to watch that battle happen, not fun to watch him go off against us," Stewart said, catching himself. "But really just taking pride. We come into the game trying to play harder than the guy in front of us, and I feel like we really took pride that second half and executed that."

The Cougars (24-8) sent Iowa State home with a Big 12 tournament record 18 3-pointers, and an all-time league-best 31 combined triples. But in a game that featured 198 total points, can you really pin the win on defense?

For a team riding a nine-game winning streak into the postseason, you absolutely can.

"Coach challenged us, especially in regards to what happened in the first half. It was just our approach and lots of details to do whatever it takes to help the team win," said Mag while slipping into a well-deserved ice bath after nearly 17 minutes of guarding the game's top scorer. "We just tried to make it as hard as possible on Jones; he had 22 points in the first half. But with guys like that, you've just got to slow him down.

"Seeing that, you've just got to give respect to him. He's a phenomenal player, and the sixth man of the year for a reason. We just did a good job as a unit to try to slow him down in the second half ... He probably got a little bit tired, but we just had to ride them down and try to burn it out a little bit."

Three-and-D describes the kind of player Mag has become in the Rutgers graduate transfer's lone season with the Cougars, including his 6 points and two rebounds on a pair of threes Thursday.

It's also an apt description for Stewart, who had two 3-pointers of his own to go along with three steals in just under 18 minutes.

Every player in BYU's 11-man rotation — or at least, 10-man rotation Thursday, with Kanon Catchings sidelined for the fourth straight game due to an injury that head coach Kevin Young calls "day-to-day" — has a role. Even with leading scorer Richie Saunders popping off for 23 points and a career-high five assists, the roles of Mag and Stewart were in the spotlight in "Ames South," where hordes of blue met throngs of red in a tournament classic.

Same with Mihailo Boskovic, who had 10 points and five rebounds on a season-high three 3-pointers in a season-best 21 minutes as the Serbian international continues to embrace his role off the bench.

"We're a team that shoots a lot of threes. For us, it's kind of normal," Boskovic said. "At one point, they were just bringing the ball up, shooting threes. We were doing that, too. We don't really want to do that, you know; that's not really our game. But we wanted to drive the ball fast, and then if there was an open shot, shoot it.

"The pace of the game sometimes just gets to you."

The Cougars' nine-game winning streak has them playing like the second-best team in the country, according to barttorvik.com, while KenPom rates them a more modest No. 23 in the predictive metric. That includes the ninth-best adjusted offense and 69th-best adjusted defense in the country, per KenPom.

BYU's season may go as far as its defense will. But if Thursday's showing was an indication, that might be a pretty high ceiling.

"KY said at the beginning of the season, our ceiling is going to be how we play defense," Stewart said.

Added Young: "Our guys did a good job of weathering the storm and did enough on both sides of the ball to give ourselves the lead. But Trey came in and gave us good defense."

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