The Cougars trailed by eight entering halftime, but Kansas State held the Cougars to 1-of-14 shooting in the third, outscoring BYU 19-9 in the frame to take a 57-39 lead into the fourth quarter. K-State bested the Cougars 39-22 in the second half to put the game away.

“They [Kansas State] were really, really spectacular today,” said head coach Lee Cummard. “I was really impressed with Kansas State offensively. They had us in rotation and flying around most of the night, because they played out of advantage. Defensively, we’ll see what the film says. Maybe we were easy to guard tonight, but they did a tremendous job guarding, so credit to them.”

The visitors from Provo were held to 30.4% shooting from the field while the Wildcats shot 47.6% on the night. BYU was outscored in the paint 40-22 and lost the turnover battle 19 to 12 for the game, with the home team scoring 30 points off Cougar giveaways.

Delaney Gibb and Marya Hudgins were the two players in double figures for BYU. Gibb racked up 11 points on 2-of-9 from the field, 1-of-7 from beyond the arc and 6-of-6 from the charity stripe. Hudgins put up 10 points on 3-of-7 shooting and 2-of-4 from three to go along with five rebounds and two steals.

Off the bench, Bolanle Yussuf led the team with seven rebounds to go along with four points, an assist, a steal and a block. Olivia Hamlin tallied seven points, and Arielle Mackey-Williams added six points, going a perfect 2-of-2 from three.

Wildcat forward Nastja Claessens recorded a career-high 25 points on an efficient 9-of-14 from the field and 4-of-6 from three. Claessens also tacked on four boards, four assists and two steals.

Men’s volleyball nets a win over Harvard

No. 8 BYU men’s volleyball took down the Harvard Crimson in a 3-0 sweep (25-22, 29-27, 25-19) Saturday night at the Harvard Invitational.

Averaging a .315 hitting percentage coming into the weekend, the Cougars hit .488 on Saturday, above .500 for most of the match.

Tyler Herget spread the ball to diversity of BYU attackers, racking up 39 assists in the three sets.

Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga had 12 kills on 15 swings, with no errors, hitting .800 in the match. He also had three aces, all in the first set.

Trent Moser added 13 kills for BYU.  Connor Oldani had a team-high 14 kills.

Gavin Chambers led the Cougars with one solo block and six block assists.

The Cougars will finish their swing of road matches this weekend on Monday at Merrimack. The match will stat at 4 p.m. Mountain time and will be available on ESPN+.