By PAUL GOTHAM
DAYTON, OH — For twenty minutes Tuesday night, the Brigham Young University Cougars set out on pace to break NCAA Tournament records. Ole Miss flipped the tempo for the second half.
Stefan Moody led six in double figures as the No. 11-seed Ole Miss Rebels erased a double-digit deficit to defeat BYU, 94-90 in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament.
Moody scored 15 of his 26 after the break and led a defensive effort which converted 15 BYU turnovers into 25 points.
“It fueled our defensive effort,” Moody said of the 25-0 advantage in points off turnovers. “It’s a lot easier to play defense when what you’re doing is working and you’re getting stops, and we kept going and rolling off that.”
Trailing by 17 at half Moody took a Jarvis Summers feed and finished at the rim. By the time the 5-10 junior guard knocked down a pull-up jumper, Ole Miss trailed 55-48 with 13:38 left on the clock.
“Definitely a sense of urgency,” Moody said about the mindset coming out of the locker room. “We can’t let up. We could have went in the locker room, sulked about it, and came back out and it would have just got worse.”
LaDarius White got in the lane for a dump off to M.J. Rhett for a dunk. Moody followed with a steal and layup to cut the lead to five and forced a BYU timeout.
“We knew they were going to play fast and we were going to try to speed them up,” Ole Miss head coach Andy Kennedy said.” I thought the entire game changed when we changed the tempo. We got them going a little faster.”
Rhett trimmed the deficit to one when Sebastian Saiz found him cutting baseline for a dunk and one.
“We wanted to attack the paint as much as we could,” Rhett said. “Our jump shot wasn’t falling today until the second half. So we kept trying to keep attacking — attack, attack, get to the rim, and that’s what we did. We were relentless, and we didn’t want to go home.”
Moody gave the Rebels their first lead of the game with a three-pointer. His off-balance trey moments later pushed the lead to five at 76-71.
“I was just trying to make plays,” Moody explained. “Coach challenges us to make plays and come back in the second half. Those are some of the big shots you gotta make.”
After hitting just 4 of 17 in the lane during the first half Ole Miss scored 30 points inside during the second stanza part of a 42-12 advantage in the lane. The Rebels corralled 16 offensive rebounds and scored 16 second-chance points.
“We changed our approach,” Rhett noted. “Changed the mindset. We came out lackadaisical in the first half, not really finishing plays around the rim, kind of missing layups. We just had to change that.”
Ole Miss shot 60 percent in the second half (24-of-40) after going 12-of-40 (30 percent) in the first half.
“They were on an NCAA [record] pace,” Kennedy said of BYU. “They shot it incredibly well. You have to match the moment or you’re going home, as they say. I thought we made big shot after big shot.”
Tyler Haws and Chase Fischer led a BYU attack which connected on 10-of-15 three-point attempts in the first half.
“He made hard, hard, hard shots,” Kennedy said of Haws. “They were doing some exchanges. We were late.”
Fischer scored the game’s first eight points. His third three of the game gave BYU an 11-6 edge. Haws connected for the first time from long range for a 30-23 BYU lead, and Skyler Halford pushed the advantage to 11 with a trey from the top of the key.
“I think we did enough offensively to win the game,” Haws said. “Kind of found our rhythm there in the first half and got it going and guys were sharing the ball so well. And it kind of got away from us in the second half. And you gotta give it to Ole Miss. They played really well, and we didn’t really have an answer for them defensively and they just made plays in the second half.”
BYU connected on just one field goal during the first four-plus minutes of the second half.
“The traps in the second half, the first eight, ten minutes of the second half were a lot more aggressive,” BYU’s head coach Dave Rose said. “Their hands were really active and we broke that pressure in the first half and that first pass to the second pass, I think, was really aggressive on our part to the shot. In the second half it was just maybe a step quicker on their part and a step slower on our part. But it felt way different.”
The Cougars finished the game 15-of-29 from long range.
“Once we made that adjustment they missed a few,” Kennedy said. “Then we were able to get into some of our changing of defense. It’s hard to change defense when you can’t make a field goal… it’s impossible in transition to change your looks.”
Ole Miss established a new school NCAA Tournament records with 36 field goals made and 24 assists. They matched a school mark with 24 rebounds.
“In the second half we were able to get to more of that,” Kennedy continued. “Bothered them. Turned it over. We got out to the open floor and took momentum of the game.”
BYU rallied to take a late lead. Haws hit a catch-and-shoot three. Kyle Collinsworth grabbed a defensive rebound and led Fischer for a pull-up trifecta and an 80-78 edge.
“I think that this game will sting for quite a while,” Rose said. “Our guys showed a lot of fight.”
BYU set an NCAA Tournament record in 2012 when the Cougars rallied from 25 down to defeat the Iona Gaels in the First Four.
“It’s obvious it’s pretty similar to two years ago when we were here,” Rose said. “It’s a tale of two halves. And this year we had a terrific first half and then they got away in the second half.”
“We just wanted to show that we belonged to be here,” Kennedy said. “There’s a lot of quality teams in college basketball that don’t have this opportunity. So let’s go show that we’re worthy, and we did that.”
Ole Miss advances to play No. 6-seed Xavier in Jacksonville on Thursday. A 4:10 tip time is scheduled.
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