Kyle Phillips, AP Photo

In Tuesday’s postgame news conference, Houston coach Kelvin Sampson spent the first few minutes talking about how difficult it was to defend BYU.

He mentioned 6-foot-10 senior forward Noah Waterman and some of the tough 3-point shots he made, as well as some of the long attempts from senior guard Jaxson Robinson.

Sampson must have been focused on something else when his players — LJ Cryer, Jamal Shead or Damian Dunn, for instance — were making NBA-type shots against tight defense.

At the college level, lots of players are shot makers. But the reality is that sometimes good shots don’t fall and bad shots do.

BYU has chosen to test defenses by shooting a lot of 3-pointers. Fans like to say, “Live by the three, die by the three” but that’s not the whole story with the Cougars.

This is the way BYU has decided to attack Big 12 defenses. It’s unique and difficult to prepare for in a game plan.

“We have to get close to 35 threes, that’s really important,” Cougars coach Mark Pope said. “Teams guard us differently. The floor opens up and some of the places where we’re not potent, we get a chance to become potent in moments because of how teams have to respond to how we approach playing the game. So there’s all the very intentional kind of unintended consequences of attacking the game the way we do.

“We can’t be belligerent, but we have to be assertive enough and confident enough that we can get shots we love and not feel like we’re casting up shots because we don’t feel like we’re good enough to get great ones. It’s not a ‘good, better, best’ issue with shooting but it is a matter of being super aggressive. Winning shots instead of just like casting up shots, there’s a difference.”

BYU started well behind the arc against Houston but ended up just 11 of 38 (29%). Pope said he doesn’t want that to deter his team next time out.

“Please don’t let us come out and shoot 20 threes on Saturday as overcompensating for that,” he said. “That’s probably my biggest focus is just making sure that we stay super aggressive.”

He said conversations with his players have to be “nuanced” about shot selection so they don’t become hesitant to execute the game plan. Pope wants teams to guard the Cougars 27 feet by 50 feet, and shooting boatloads of 3-pointers helps accomplish that goal.

The players have the green light, and they know it.

“Everybody on the court are shooters,” Waterman said. “We just really try to find the open man, whoever is open, so I don’t think there are really any bad shots. Jax (Jaxson Robinson) shot some long ones but Jax makes those shots. How we play, we’re a shooting team. (Positions) one through five are going to shoot the ball. We could have taken a little better shots at the end of the game (against Houston). But when we have five shooters on the floor, we’re just going to pass the ball around, find the open guy, drive and cut. Whoever is open is going to shoot it with confidence.”

SCOUTING REPORT

Texas (14-5 overall, 3-3 Big 12) comes to the Marriott Center unranked but is playing its best basketball coming off of a pair of wins against ranked teams in No. 9 Baylor (75-73) and No. 11 Oklahoma (75-60).

“Any win in this conference is a big win, but it’s onto the next hard challenge,” Texas coach Rodney Terry said. “That’s why we have the best league in the country.”

Guard Max Abmas, a graduate transfer from Oral Roberts, leads the Longhorns with 17.9 points and 4.4 assists per game. He’s 15th on the all-time NCAA career scoring list with 2,902 points. Dylan Disu, a 6-9 forward, missed the first nine games of the season with a foot injury but has been terrific since coming back, averaging 15.1 points and shooting 57% from the 3-point line.

“I think they probably feel like they’re what they were supposed to be at the beginning of this season,” Pope said. “So they’re playing incredible basketball. They’re super dangerous.”

Pope said his team has moved on from the disappointing loss to Houston on Tuesday.

“I think every game is so emotional, right?” he said. “The uniqueness of this deal is that all season long we’ve been really intentional about when we go compete, we go compete. And when we step off the court, we dial it way back. This (league) is such an onslaught, we’re trying to actually direct all of our emotion, intensity and effort and all of that into those 40 minutes, and then go a little bit and take a measured drastic step away from that once we’re off the court.”

“Clearly there was a ton of emotion in the locker room after the game (against Houston) but our guys are really good at processing that together, so I think we kind of understand the the assignment and we’re trying to do the best we can.”

Men’s College Basketball

Texas (14-5, 3-3 Big 12) at No. 21 BYU (14-5, 2-4 Big 12)

Saturday, noon MT

Marriott Center in Provo, Utah

TV: ESPN

Streaming: ESPN+

Radio: KSL 102.7 FM/1160 AM

Live stats: byucougars.com

The Word: BYU leads the all-time series against Texas 4-2 and won the last meeting at the 2013 Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City (86-82). … The Cougars are 13th in the country in home attendance (14,788). … This is the Longhorns first trip to Provo for a men’s basketball game since 1974. … Texas is second in the Big 12 in 3-point field goal percentage (37.8%).

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