After starting the Big 12 schedule 0-3, the BYU women’s basketball team was desperate for a win.

The blue Cougars pulled it off by doing what it couldn’t do in losses to Arizona, Cincinnati and No. 18 West Virginia: Hold on to a second-half lead.

Emma Calvert scored 21 points, Amari Whiting added 20 more and BYU dominated in the paint (48-26), two big factors in Wednesday’s 89-75 victory against Houston at the Marriott Center.

“Every game, I try and tell them we want to learn from it,” head coach Amber Whiting said. “We were up at Cincinnati and we gave it away. So we told them in a time out, we’ve been here before. When Houston started to cut into the lead, I got after the team and said, ‘We’re not doing this again. We don’t want that crappy feeling at the end of the game. We want to lock down right now and focus in.’ We did the job.”

The 89 points was a season-high for BYU, a powerful offensive performance keyed by great shooting (54%, 33 of 51), cutting down on turnovers (13, down from 31 in the loss at West Virginia) and sharing the ball (22 assists).

In the post-game news conference, the first thing Amari Whiting did was locate the turnovers on the stat sheet.

The BYU point guard was pleased with how her team handled the pressure from Houston and also that she had just one turnover in 32 minutes of play.

“The game before this (vs. West Virginia) I had seven turnovers, and that’s not OK,” she said. “As the point guard, I’m letting my team down when I do that. It takes us out of opportunities and possessions where we could score and win the game. So I took it upon myself to be better for my team and just take care of the ball.”

Calvert was 9 of 11 from the field and added seven rebounds and three assists. Whiting also filled up the stat sheet by grabbing seven rebounds and dishing out five assists. Leading scorer Delaney Gibb started slowly but finished with 16 points, 13 in the second half. Two more important contributions came from Kambree Barber, who totaled ten rebounds, Brinley Cannon, who scored ten points and Kemery Congdon, who led the blue Cougars with seven assists.

Houston (4-11 overall, 1-4 Big 12), which came into the game shooting just 28% from the 3-point line, made a season-high ten triples on 22 shots (46%) to stay in the game. Kierra Merchant topped the red Cougars with 23 points, making 5 of 7 from deep.

The BYU offense was cooking in the first half, shooting 55% (18 of 33) from the floor and assisting on 13 of 18 field goals. Back-to-back 3-pointers from Congdon and Amari Whiting got the blue Cougars off to a good start and a 11-2 burst, with six points off the bench inside from Kendra Gillispie, gave the home team a 21-11 lead after one.

BYU assisted on all nine baskets in the first quarter and had just one turnover.

A 3-point play from Brinley Cannon gave the blue Cougars their largest lead of the half, 12 points, at 26-14 with 8:50 to play. Houston stayed close, though, with good 3-point shooting. The red Cougars made 5 of 10 from beyond the arc and closed to within five, 37-32, with 1:20 to go in the half on a triple from Gia Cooke. BYU finished the quarter on a 7-1 run, Lauren Davenport beating the halftime buzzer with a 3-pointer for a 44-33 lead.

Amari Whiting had a busy first half with 11 points, four rebounds, four assists and a steal. Calvert scored 10 points for the blue Cougars and Cannon added eight.

Davenport opened the second half with another 3-pointer and BYU led 47-33, but Houston made 9 of 16 shots (56%) from the field and knocked down three more triples to stay in the game. An 8-0 run by the red Cougars, capped by a triple from Cooke, brought the visitors within two at 54-52 with 3:53 to play.

BYU extended their lead by making 8 of 9 from the foul line and took a 64-54 advantage into the fourth quarter.

An offensive rebound putback from Kambrie Barber and a 3-point play from Gibb extended the blue Cougars lead lead to 77-62 with 4:17 remaining and BYU, behind nine points from Gibb, cruised to its first Big 12 victory of the season.

“We’ve been going through it lately, going out on the road for a week and dropping two games like that, it was tough,” Coach Whiting said. “The media asked me on Monday about where their mindsets were and I’ve never doubted them. They’ve always been locked in a ready to go. They’re just competitive kids and they want to win. You just saw that out of them. They weren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer tonight.”

BYU (10-4, 1-3) will host No. 12 Kansas State in the Marriott Center on Saturday at 4 p.m. MT. The Wildcats drilled No. 22 Utah 71-47 in Salt Lake City on Wednesday.