COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The little nook doesn't look like much. Room 2083, locker room C, is merely the place away from the Marriott Center where BYU is starting to get a tradition of celebrating.

"For us to be able to come out in the second half and shoot the ball like we did, and have confidence in each other, it's big for the confidence of our team," BYU head coach Dave Rose said.

They are turning into rock stars in the Springs, partying backstage before boarding a private jet back home. It's happened two years in a row, and the last time the Falcons were conquered in consecutive seasons by BYU in its 5,900-seat arena was 1995-96.

This one was equally special to the 2007 win here, though for different reasons. Last year's was toward the end of the season and the Cougars snapped a 30-game Falcon home-court winning streak, while defeating a more experienced team in a gutsy four-point win.

This year, however, gives Rose's team more than a glimmer of hope that the team goals can be repeated. The Cougars are 4-5 at Clune since the Mountain West Conference was formed. In each of the three previous years they pulled out wins -- 2001, 2003 and last year -- a regular-season title was theirs.

"We'll see," Rose said, not exactly sounding like Joe Namath or any New York Giant in predicting a Super Bowl win. "I suspect it will be real tough for teams to get wins here. It was for us."

BYU celebrated various accomplishments in the locker room as the crowd of 4,954 filed out quietly, following the traditional singing of the school song.

Jonathan Tavernari tied Air Force standout Tim Anderson with a game-high 22 points. The sophomore BYU power forward added a career-high four assists.

Lee Cummard contributed 21 points, another one of those nights when it wasn't just that he scored -- but when.

He hit 8-of-12 shots, and all of the conversions appeared to come at critical times. Just when the Section 8 of rowdy students was revving for their team to pull through, when the Cougar lead was sliced to about three points or less, the junior or a teammate would come through.

Cummard broke an 11-all game with a 10-foot jumper, just after Falcon big man Keith Maren (career-high 15 points) drained a 3-pointer. He extended BYU's lead to 23-20 on a baseline shot, followed up with a steal and finger-roll lay-in for a five-point margin and continued to manufacture the same chutzpah in the second half.

Maybe no shot was bigger than his trey at the 10-minute mark, as the shot clock approached zero, that made it 48-41.

BYU's lead never shrunk below five points again. That happened twice, the latest of which came on Matt Holland's layup with 7:15 remaining, giving the Cougars a 53-48 advantage.

After that was all Cougars. Cummard hit a 3 and Trent Plaisted -- yeah, we should probably mention him -- had consecutive inside scores on what was otherwise a crummy night for him. (We'll get to that in a second.)

Combined with freshman Jimmer Fredette (10 points), BYU had too many options, "and it's tough to stop them," Anderson said.

Cummard said: "There were a lot of big shots hit. Jimmer hit a few, J.T. hit a few. I got a couple. And Trent hit some big ones. They quieted the crowd and we weathered the storm."

Well, all but the one raging in Plaisted's stomach.

The junior center known for double-doubles of the rebound-scoring kind nearly pulled one off in a two-day period of retching. He had 10 vomiting sessions on Monday night and took eight bags of IV fluid starting earlier Monday after practice.

He wasn't even in his uniform as the team warmed up prior to going to the locker room the last time before introductions. But he asked Rose if it was OK if he tried to play.

Gee, wonder what the coach's answer would be?

Plaisted quite respectfully scored nine points in 19 minutes -- six and eight short of his averages, respectively.

"I saw all the guys warming up," Plaisted said about wearing pants and a polo shirt on the court while teammates shot layups. "I thought I might as well give it a go. I felt really bad. I've never been in that situation where I was in my normal clothes and my team was warming up without me. I thought, 'this is ridiculous.' "

The rest was everything the Cougars could've hoped for, as they won at a place where fellow Mountain West Conference leader UNLV -- which kept pace by winning at TCU on Wednesday -- has already lost.

BYU improved to 16-5 overall, 5-1 Mountain West; Air Force fell to 11-8, 3-3.

"We rebounded, we shared the ball on offense and we took a lot of good shots," said Tavernari, who made his final four -- three jumpers (one banked) and a 3-pointer -- to finish 8-of-15 from the field.