Ute women score first 22 points, pound BYU

During the 2007 BYU-Utah women's basketball game in the Marriott Center, Cougars had their highest attendance ever with 4,018 fans.

The goal Saturday night was to break that record when the Utes came to town and the final tally of 6,206 indicated the success/failure of the promotion.

But the number should really be 6,193 -- since the entire BYU team failed to show up.

The Cougars surrendered the first 22 points of the game and never got within 19 the rest of the way, falling to Utah, 80-49.

"Utah played outstanding tonight," said BYU head coach Jeff Judkins. "They outplayed us in every aspect of the game. They out-hustled us, they out-toughed us, they executed better than we did. You have to give Utah a lot of credit."

It wasn't until the 11:22 mark that the Cougars managed to score their first points of the game but they never found a way to put together a run to make it a contest. BYU couldn't get jump shots, layups, 3s, anything to fall.

At the other end, the Utes could do no wrong for much of the game. The controled virtually every statistical category in the dominant victory, including making 50.9 percent of their shots from the field (29-of-57, many of the misses coming when the game was decided) compared to just 34.6 percent for BYU (18-of-52).

"Our first half tonight was very, very good," said Utah head coach Elaine Elliott. "You'd like to think you can play better but we appreciate how well we played. Now we have to go out and try to repeat that effort."

The visitors shredded the usually-stifling Cougar defense with nearly flawless mid-range jump shots and quickness to the basket.

Leading the way was Ute senior point guard Leilani Mitchell, who had another outstanding performance. She finished with 24 points on 9-of-14 shooting from the field and 7-of-7 from the foul line, with five assists, five rebounds and just two turnovers.

After the initial surge by Utah, BYU managed to nearly hold their own until halftime but that meant they still had a 26-point deficit to overcome.

Any hope of a miraculous Cougar comeback died early in the second frame. The Utes knocked down three straight 3-point bombs to push the advantage to 37 points and then simply cruised to the final 31-point win.

BYU did get 21 points from senior guard Mallory Carling, who knocked down five treys in an attempt to get her squad a little closer.

Utah won its ninth straight game and remains undefeated in league play (14-3, 3-0), while the Cougars (8-7, 2-1) now sit one game back in the Mountain West Conference standings.

"We'll bounce back," Judkins said. "I know we will. We're a young team and we'll fight back."

BYU will try to get back on track on the road at San Diego State on Wednesday at 7 p.m.

• Jared Lloyd can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it