Analysis: No. 10 BYU’s defense delivers, ‘Big 3′ dominates in 93-57 victory over former WCC foe Pacific

During BYU’s decade-plus tenure in the West Coast Conference, the Cougars played in plenty of ugly games against Pacific. It became something of a series tradition.

On Tuesday night, in BYU’s first meeting with the Tigers (or any former WCC foe, for that matter) since joining the Big 12, a bit of that ugliness resurfaced, most notably in a clunky start and 20-8 Pacific run out of halftime to cut the Cougars’ lead to nine points.

But this current BYU team has a luxury it never did in the WCC: AJ Dybantsa, Rob Wright III and a non-freshman Richie Saunders.

Each member of the aforementioned trio poured in at least 22 points Tuesday against Pacific, accounting for 69 total points to help orchestrate a 93-57 Cougars victory at the Marriott Center and move to 10-1 on the season.

“I think it’s going to be hard for teams to pick their poison (defensively), and a game like this kind of exemplified that,” Dybantsa said after the win. “If you want to go steal out on Richie, then Rob has an open lane, or vice versa, for any one of us. So I think if we can keep doing that, then we’re going to blow teams up.”

Dybantsa recorded his first career double-double, scoring 22 points on 8 of 14 shooting with a career-best 10 rebounds.

He became the first BYU player with four consecutive 20-plus point outings since the program’s all-time leading scorer Tyler Haws in 2015.

“Coach has been on my head that I should be averaging, you know, around 10 rebounds with my athleticism,” Dybantsa said. “I think I’ve been stuck at like six to eight for a couple games, so I just tried to be more active on the boards.”

Wright posted 22 points — 16 after halftime — with five rebounds and four assists, while Saunders compiled a game-high 24 points to couple with four boards and three assists.

Not since Yoeli Childs, TJ Haws and Jake Toolson in 2020 had three Cougars each scored 20 or more points in the same game before the current “Brig 3″ accomplished the feat against Pacific.

“Those guys are rock solid, you know, obviously we rely on those guys a lot,” head coach Kevin Young said. “I really was happy with what Richie did. Him and I have been studying his analytics where we can get him different play types offensively. He had a couple of what we call ‘get games’ where he was playing off handoffs and stuff, which I thought was pretty good.

“AJ was AJ, and that flurry that Rob had, you know, I thought he really showed his his speed and quickness. They played well.”

Additionally, BYU received another breakout performance from its bench, as Idaho transfer Tyler Mrus scored 15 points with four made 3-pointers in 20 minutes of work.

Prior to Tuesday, Mrus had averaged just 0.9 points per game on the season and was shooting below 20% from long distance. Unlocking more production out of the previous 38% 3-point shooter — along with Aleksej Kostić’s recent success as well — is a massive development for the depth-starved, Dawson Baker-less Cougars.

“It was the confidence that my teammates gave me,” Mrus said. “They kept passing me the ball and telling me to shoot, so they instilled confidence in me.”

Added Young: “If (Kostić and Mrus) can come in and be that those types of (bench) shooters, which they can be, and we know they are, which is why they’re here, you know, that’s gonna open up a lot of things for everybody else.”

While BYU did end up scoring 93 points and shooting 46.8% from the field and 39.3% from 3-point range, it was the Cougars’ defense that stood out the most against Pacific, especially when the Tigers clawed back to within single digits in the second half.

Over a eight minute stretch, BYU went on a 30-5 run to pull away for good, with the Cougars getting stop after stop and turning their takeaways into transition buckets, scoring 26 fast break points in all.

“We were trying to be the aggressors and get stops, get out in transition and try to score some easy ones,” Wright said. “I feel like we did that to open the game back up.”

“Our defense was phenomenal during that stretch, and we started making a couple threes,” Young said. “... I think it was all really fueled by our defense, which has been really good.”

Pressuring more than it previously had this season, BYU ultimately forced 18 Pacific turnovers — Saunders and Wright each swiped five steals, with Saunders doing so entirely in the first half — as the Tigers managed just 0.792 points per possession.

“We’re still learning our group. We’ve found a little rhythm with some of the pressure, it’s like when AJ played with Team USA, they would do some of that with him and it was interesting,” Young said. “We just hadn’t gotten to it until we needed it to come back from some games. Because of some of the slow starts, maybe that’s a way we can kind of jump-start our guys.”

With the Quad 3 victory over Pacific under their belt, the Cougars will now turn to Abilene Christian at home on Friday for their penultimate nonconference contest.