BYU drops another conference road game to Kansas State

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. BYU goes on the road for a conference game. The Cougars stick around in the first half, shoot an abysmal percentage from the 3-point line, and ultimately lose to a team they probably should beat. It’s starting to become the expectation for this BYU team.

The Cougars dropped yet another road game Saturday, falling to Kansas State, 84-74, in one of BYU’s worst defensive performance of the year.

This road loss seems different from the rest. The Cougars glaring problem was their atrocious shooting, going 19.4% from three and 40.8% from the field. More concerning however was BYU’s defense.

The Cougars allowed the conference’s worst offense to score at will for the entire 40 minutes. That 84-point mark is the most Kansas State has scored in a conference game this season. Arthur Kaluma scored his career-high with 28 points. The Wildcats shot 56.3% from the field, 46.7% from three, and 74.2% from the free throw line. It truly was one of BYU’s worst defensive performance all season.

Despite all of this, the Cougars still found a way to stay in the game until the very end.

BYU couldn’t have had a worse start in this one. Kansas State jumped out to a 16-4 lead in the first five minutes. The Wildcats canned their first three 3s and BYU couldn’t answer. The Cougars finally found a groove and went on a 12-1 run to bring the game within one point.

The first half continue to go back and forth, and Kansas State held a four-point lead heading into the locker room. BYU had shot just 25% from three and given up 42 points.

The wheels started to fall off, as it seems to a lot with this BYU team, in the second half. The Cougars put up brick after brick and found themselves down 16 points with about 10 minutes to go. Despite quite literally its worst 3-point shooting performance of the season BYU found itself down just single-digits with a few minutes to go.

The Cougars went into full-court press, and were able to generate some turnovers. However, their poor shooting continued to haunt them, and they weren’t able to capitalize with made shots. Free throws for the Wildcats put the game away and BYU walked off the court with another road loss.

The Cougars are now 2-6 on the road this season. It’s not great, but their 17-2 record at home and neutral sites make up for it. This is a tournament team. A single-digit seed tournament team. The luxury of the Big 12 is that BYU can lose this game and will still be ranked Monday morning.

BYU moves to 7-7 in conference, which is still good enough to put them in the upper half of the conference standings. With just four games remaining, coach Mark Pope and his squad will look to finish strong and put themselves in a position to get an early bye in the Big 12 tournament.

The Cougars next matchup is at Kansas Tuesday night. The Jayhawks haven’t lost at home all season. It will take BYU’s best game this season to knock them off at their place.

Chase is the sports editor for the Daily Universe. Follow him on X: @Chase_rogers0