BYU NewsNet - Viewpoint: Second Half a Charm for the Y

LAS VEGAS -— Another game, another comeback victory.

BYU did just that, as it used a strong second half to escape a scrappy Air Force team on Thursday in its first game of the MWC Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas.

The Cougars have now gotten off to slow starts and trailed at halftime the past five games - — against San Diego State, Utah, Wyoming and Air Force twice -— but have come back to win each of them.

Tactically speaking, falling behind early is not the best way to win a basketball game.

“It worries me to trail, yeah,” BYU coach Dave Rose said. “But I’ve got a lot of confidence in our players, a lot of confidence in our coaching staff that we can make adjustments. The key is that it’s close at halftime, so we’re not in a big hole.”

The Cougars’ first-half offense has been particularly abysmal -— they shot a combined 28 percent in the first half of the previous four games. Against Air Force, however, it was their defense that betrayed them. BYU shot 45.5 percent and scored 38 points against Air Force, which scored a season-high 41 points in the first half and took a three-point lead into halftime.

“Air Force was pretty efficient in the first half, shooting over 50 percent from the field, spreading the floor pretty well, and they made big shots on big plays,” Rose said. “We had opportunities to kind of spread it out a little bit, and they just hung right in there.”

To their credit, the players have been able to make successful halftime adjustments and come out and take over late in games. Against Air Force, BYU came out and went on a 13-1 run — thanks largely to nine straight points from Jimmer Fredette — then controlled the flow for the duration of the game.

“We’ve been doing well at making halftime adjustments and coming out and executing in the second half, but we need to continue to try to start off the game better,” Fredette said. “Getting in a flow early can play a big part in our success, and it’s something we really need to do as we move forward in the post-season.”

Success has come in bunches for BYU this season, but the come-from-behind victories that have been its trademark lately will not be so easy to come by as the competition gets stiffer in both the MWC and NCAA tournaments.

Simply put, if BYU can’t put away Air Force, which hadn’t won a conference game until its victory over Colorado State on Wednesday, until late in the second half, you have to wonder if the team won’t have major problems in the NCAA Tournament, making March Madness into another short and forgetful experience for BYU.