BYU's frontrunner takes all the free throws he can get

LAS VEGAS — It was an exhibition of the insanely uninteresting.

With all due respect to BYU’s Jimmer Fredette, Thursday’s performance had to be one of the most monotonous 45-point onslaughts in the history of college basketball. And in the history of the Mountain West Conference Tournament.

Behind Fredette’s 45 points, a MWC Tournament single-game record, No. 2 seeded BYU secured an appearance in the MWC Tournament semifinals, rolling to a 95-85 win over No. 7 seeded TCU. The Cougars will face No. 3 seeded UNLV — which defeated No. 6 seeded Utah 73-61 in Thursday’s quarterfinal closer — for a spot in the MWC championship game Saturday.

Jackson Emery was the only other Cougar to score in double figures. He added 15 points, seven rebounds and three assists.
Much of the mind-numbing night, however, belonged to Fredette.

“Tonight, he was just terrific,” said TCU head coach Jim Christian. “He gets great angles to the basket. He splits traps. He finds open men.”
Most of all, he shoots free throws, offsetting his lack of production from the field, where Fredette was just 2-of-10 from the 3-point line and 10-of-23 from field.

Time and again, it was the same scenario: Fredette slashing past a slew of Horned Frog defenders, drawing contact, stepping to the free-throw line and hitting freebies in lieu of baskets. Of his 45 points, more than half came at the free-throw line, where he was
23-of-24. The 24 free-throw attempts surpassed the previous high mark of 19 set in 2002 by UNLV’s Ricky Morgan.

“I’ve seen Shaq get fouled a lot, but he doesn’t make as many as Jimmer,” Emery said. “It’s almost automatic when you foul him.”
That being the case, the Horned Frogs still never stopped fouling him. Even so, TCU didn’t let up; the stinging 30-point home-court flogging it endured five days ago still at the forefront of its mind.

Not this time.

For a half, it looked as if the Horned Frogs might pull out the improbable. TCU took its first lead of the night, benefitting from an 11-1 run. The Horned Frogs largest lead was three, and they’d head into the half up 41-40.

Throughout the first half, TCU’s Ronnie Moss kept the Frogs within inches of the second-seeded Cougars. Moss finished with 22 points. His supporting cast came through, too. Four other Frogs scored in double figures aside from Moss.

With 12:26 to go in the second half, Moss hit a 3 ball and was fouled, hitting the free throw, which sliced the margin to 59-58.

The Cougars, however, quickly hushed the Horned Frogs. Less than a 1:30 later, Michael Loyd Jr. ripped Moss and put down a two-handed flush.
From there, it was all Cougars, and they finished the game on a 12-1 spurt to take a 15-point lead with 4:33 left. TCU drew no closer than 10.
“Good teams can dominate you for a stretch, and that’s what BYU did,” Christian said. “That’s when the lead blew up … From that point on, they made us play catch up.”