Analysis: No. 25 BYU makes early claim to be an elite offensive unit in opening win over Ohio State

At one point this offseason, Kevin Young claimed his new-look Cougars would be the “most prolific shooting team” he’d had thus far at BYU.

Early on in Monday’s season opener against Ohio State, however, Young’s squad looked like anything but.

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The first 10 minutes of the regular season saw BYU miss 10 of 13 field goal attempts, with seven misses coming from behind the arc.

But when the shots started falling for the Cougars, they seemingly never stopped.

Following the initial slump, No. 25-ranked BYU shot 64% from the field and 63% from 3-point range — averaging 1.4 points per possession in all — to bury the visiting Ohio State Buckeyes 94-83 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.

Ohio State hadn’t dropped a regular season opener since 2003, but surrendering 60 second half points to Young’s Cougars now puts the Buckeyes in unfamiliar territory: an 0-1 record.

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“I think we just played to our identity,” Young told reporters postgame. “I thought in the first half they put us in mud a little bit, particularly the first five or six minutes. But the message for our guys coming into the game was just don’t make stuff up. This can be a very dynamic offensive team, so to hang 60 points in a half on somebody of that caliber is impressive.”

All five BYU starters scored in double figures, a feat the Cougars hadn’t achieved since their last Delta Center appearance against Cal Baptist in December of 2025.

And considering those BYU players were all competing in their first regular season contest together on Monday, scoring 94 total points against a veteran-heavy, reigning NCAA tournament team from the Big Ten should feel all the more encouraging — especially when 83 of those points were scored in the game’s final 30 minutes.

“It’s funny that we scored that many (points) because it kind of felt like (the offense) was stuck in the first half,” said BYU guard Collin Chandler, who made his Cougars debut Monday just 20 minutes south of his hometown of…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/analysis-no-25-byu-makes-084039603.html

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Publish date : 2026-11-03 08:40:00

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