A day after the Chaminade Silverswords men’s basketball team hung around with the Pittsburgh Panthers 81-68, the team faced the BYU Cougars in the consolation bracket of the EA Sports Maui Invitational and lost 121-85 on Tuesday. Chaminade has never won a game in the tournament on a Tuesday in the tournament in 31 years of play.
BYU came off a double- overtime loss to the San Diego State Aztecs that took a beating on both sides and it was evident early when the Cougars let the take shots were open and uncontested, the Swords went into the first media timeout trailing 16-13.
The game went back and forth despite the Cougars making their first 12 three-pointers. BYU was able to go on a run that solidified the victory for the Cougars. During the first half, the Cougars were living by the three, opening the game with 12 straight 2-pointers
“First of all we’ve had Dave Odom over here for four years giving defensive clinic presentations on the island, I probably should’ve paid attention,” head coach Eric Bovaird said. “Besides that, obviously, we’re a record setting team either one way or another. Obviously when you shoot the ball 14-18 from the 3-point line in the first half, it’s a tough road to go down after that.”
Chase Fisher of BYU led the Cougars in the first half with 27 points, all from 3-pointers. Fisher only played 27 minutes in the game and only made one more three pointer to finish the game with 30 points. The 10 threes tied the tournament record set by Christophe Varidel of Chaminade last year.
Sophomore guard Kiran Shastri of Chaminade led with 16 points and but had a off night from beyond the arc, scoring only three 3-pointers in 10 tries.
“Coach gives me confidence to take (threes),” Shastri said. “It was I mean, yesterday’s game was real tough rebounding wise, I mean we knew that going into the game, but going into todays game we felt like we matched up pretty well against them as far as size, but um you know I thought we did a good job on the inside and forced them to take threes, but I mean they were incredible shooters and they did their job and hit them and that’s, you live and die by the three and (the cougars) won it.”
With the loss, Chaminade is now 2-2 on the year, BYU improves to 4-1. Up next for the Silverswords is the seventh place game against Missouri. Tip-off is set for 9:30 a.m.
In the semi-final that featured Arizona and Kansas State, it was the wildcats from Tucson that overcame a sluggish start from Stanley Johnson and Kaleb Tarczewski to win 72-68 and advance to the tournament finals to play San Diego State who beat Pittsburgh 74-57. Freshman forward Stanley Johnson had a key steal at the end of the game to prevent Kansas State from getting a shot off and forcing a tie. The championship game will be on ESPN at 5 p.m.