BYU Beats South Florida, Advances to Diamond Head Classic Semifinals

BYU’s offense wasn’t very pretty, but defense and rebounding carried them as they beat South Florida 54-39 in the first round of the Diamond Head Classic.

South Florida game into the game great defensively and atrocious on the offensive end, and continued that versus BYU. BYU shot 36% from the field compared to USF’s 26% and out-rebounded the Bulls 48-30. Caleb Lohner was the main man on the glass with 14 boards to go along with 9 points. Fousseyni Traore and Gideon George were the high scorers off the bench with 11 points apiece while Alex Barcello added 10 points. Gideon George came into the game shooting 3-21 from deep on the season and went 3-5 versus USF. BYU will need to clean up the turnovers for next game — they turned the ball over 16 times total versus USF.

BYU now awaits the winner orf Vanderbilt-Hawaii Thursday night on the semifinals. Vanderbilt would be the better resume-building opportunity, as they are a top 100 team and have the preseason SEC Player of the Year in Scotty Pippen Jr. Liberty and Stanford won their games in the morning, meaning BYU will play one of those two teams on Christmas day.