All those promises the BYU basketball team made about playing tougher defense this season were kept — at least for one night — on Wednesday thousands of miles away from Provo.
In a low-scoring defensive struggle, the Cougars held off defending Ivy League champion Princeton 65-56 at Jadwin Gymnasium to improve to 2-0 on the season.
“We did a really good job on the defensive end,” BYU coach Dave Rose said. “I am happy for the guys. I think we have a real commitment to that and these guys understand the importance of executing the game plan and staying with it to the end.”
The Cougars made their final 17 free-throw attempts and were 25 of 27 from the charity stripe to grind out the win after beating Princeton by a similar margin last year in a high-scoring game in Provo.
BYU’s Elijah Bryant led all scorers with 22 points and was 9 of 10 from the free-throw line; Zac Seljaas and TJ Haws added 11 and 10 points, respectively, and Haws made three big free throws after being fouled attempting a 3-pointer with two minutes and 30 seconds remaining.
The free throws gave BYU a 56-51 lead and ended a 6-0 Princeton run.
“This was not our best offensive night tonight,” Rose said. “We did get to the free-throw line and we converted when we got there. That was one thing we did really well. Other than that, it seemed pretty tough on the offensive end.”
After Haws’ free throws, the Cougars got a stop and star forward Yoeli Childs made his only field goal of the game to push BYU’s lead to seven. Bryant added a layup and Childs hit a pair of free throws to complete BYU’s scoring.
Childs had eight points and 11 rebounds, the 12th double-digit rebounding game of his career.
“It was a really intense game, especially down the stretch,” said BYU sophomore Dalton Nixon. “It feels really good to get that win here. It was awesome to see all the BYU fans show up and it felt like a home game at times.”
The teams were knotted at 29-29 at halftime. The Cougars moved out to a nine-point lead, then hit a stretch where they went nine minutes and 29 seconds without making a field goal.
“They are a really good defensive team,” Rose said.
On this night, BYU was, too.
Princeton averaged 26 3-point attempts last season, but got off only nine Wednesday. The Tigers made seven, including a long one by Ryan Schwieger with three minutes left that trimmed BYU’s lead to two.
“You get beat by Princeton when you let them shoot a lot of threes,” Rose said. ’We did a pretty good job of not giving them a lot of 3-point shots and challenging most of them.”
Devin Cannady led Princeton with 19 points and Myles Stephens added 10.
Next up for BYU is a rematch Saturday in the Marriott Center against UT Arlington, the team that knocked the Cougars out of the NIT last March.
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