BYU Women's Basketball weekly recap: Cougars win streak comes to an end

The BYU women's basketball team is in the meat of conference play as they took on Pacific and Saint Mary's in the Marriott Center last week. After a dominating win over the Tigers, the Cougars dropped one at home against the Gaels. The loss ended the Cougars six game win streak but they have still won 11 of their last 13. The Cougars are currently tied for third place in the West Coast Conference and will look to take over sole possession of third as they host Sand Diego at home this week. With a little outside help they could even find themselves pushing into second place going into the second half of the conference season.

Here is a look at how the Cougars fared last week at home:

Win vs Pacific

On Thursday night the Cougars showed once again that they have two of the best players in the league as they put up 89 points and led by 32 points at one point. Morgan Bailey and Lexi Eaton each scored career highs in points as they combined for 63 of the 89 points. Bailey earned her eighth double-double of the season, and 16^th of her career, as she ended up with 31 points and 11 rebounds while Eaton scored 32 points and added eight assists. Kylie Maeda added a career high nine assists and Makenzi Morrison added six assists, also a career high. The cougars took the lead early and never looked back as Bailey scored eight of the first 10 points for the Cougars and Eaton added three early three-pointers. The final score was a bit misleading as the 89-72 score was not indicative of how out of hand the game was, as the Cougars cleared their bench during the last 10 minutes of the game. The only players that didn't get on the floor were those that were out with injuries, although it isn't a stretch to think that an injured Ashley Garfield could have still done some damage against the Tigers.

Loss vs Saint Mary's

Once again Morgan Bailey recorded a double-double as she scored 17 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, this time in a heartbreaking loss to the Gaels. The Cougars led by seven at the half but went cold from the field and only shot 20% for the second half. Lexi Eaton added 17 points and seven rebounds but the cold shooting Cougars couldn't overcome a 40% shooting game from the Gaels, or the fact that they were outrebounded 52-29.  BYU did lead by 10 early in the half but a six minute drought allowed the Gaels to get back into the game and eventually take the lead. The Cougars fought to the end but the lack of scoring, and the Gaels hitting their free-throws, ended up costing them the game. With the 61-51 loss the Cougars dropped into a third place tie with San Diego in the WCC Conference standings.

Next Game

The Cougars will stay home for another game as they will play San Diego, with third place on the line, on Saturday the 24^th of January. The game is at 2 pm MST and will be shown on BYUtv.

Saturday's game will be the Daddy/Daughter game for the year and as such will have activities geared towards getting fathers and their daughters to spend time together. Make sure you take advantage of this and take your whole family to cheer on the Cougars, and maybe see Dad embarrassed on the big screen!