BYU reserve guard Michael Loyd creates buzz in Oklahoma
OKLAHOMA CITY — BYU assistant head coach Dave Rice chose the word carefully on how he’d best describe reserve guard Michael Loyd whose antics Thursday helped propel the Cougars into the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
“Fearless. He is just fearless,” said Rice.
That was never more apparent than late in the first half of BYU’s 99-92 double-overtime win over Florida in the Ford Center.
The Cougars started out shaky, just like 12 previous outings in the Big Dance. Florida had a 28-21 lead when BYU head coach Dave Rose inserted Loyd into the game to give starting point guard Jimmer Fredette a rest.
What transpired in the next two minutes was amazing, a copy of Loyd’s performances against New Mexico, Utah and TCU during Mountain West play in the final weeks of the regular season.
Loyd had two driving scores and pulled up for two 3-pointers and suddenly the Cougars used that 10-point burst to take a lead into halftime. Loyd built a foundation for BYU’s first tournament win since 1993 in those 120 seconds.
Loyd finished with a career high 26 points on 7 of 10 shooting. He made 9 of 10 free throws. But more importantly, he provided Florida defenders with another headache other than Fredette and in the end, he may have wore down Gator defenders to the point in the second overtime they couldn’t make open shots to win the game.
“Coach Rice did a terrific job of making a couple of adjustments,” said BYU coach Dave Rose. “We got Mike in there. He was, you know, unbelievable. You look at 26 points, you know, everyone is going to think that’s how we won the game, but Mike was really disruptive defensively and gave us a chance to kind of hold down Ervin Walker and Kenny Boynton, two really, really good guards.”
Billy Donovan said Loyd is very aggressive and BYU plays much faster when he’s in the game. “Fredette to me has got good command, good pace. When they bring in (Charles) Abouo and Loyd, the intensity level goes up. I think that they actually put more pressure on Boynton and Walker because now you’re chasing Fredette around for 35 seconds and now he comes in, Fredette is resting and this guy is coming at you full speed. It makes it really, really difficult.”
Hi Ray,BYU doesn’t play too many schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. They play San Francisco that was last week, Santa Clara, and I think one other that I can’t rmmeeber now. Football is even less but they will be coming to California to play San Jose in the fall. We will be at that game no matter what! Maybe we’ll take Parker since he’s the only one who has never been to a live game before. It was not a full house. The place filled up more in the last few minutes before the game started. But it was not packed by any means. The funny thing is I think there were more BYU fans than Santa Clara fans! When Santa Clara came out everyone clapped and cheered politely. Then BYU came out and the place erupted into cheers. There were obviously mics near the student section because that’s all you could hear on TV. We were sitting across from the student section. Our section was shown once but only for a brief second so we really couldn’t be seen. Yeah, I watched part of the rebroadcasted game with Heath and his dad. We did see some people we know on TV. They were sitting behind one of the baskets. It was a fun game. Tristan