A strong second half pushed BYU basketball past Idaho Saturday afternoon at the Marriott Center in Provo, moving Kevin Young’s Cougars to 4-0 on the young season.

3 takeaways

Fousseyni Traore and Richie Saunders were fantastic. The pair of former high school teammates each posted career highs in scoring with 29 and 26 points, respectively. Traore grabbed nine rebounds, while Saunders swiped four steals and recorded three blocks.

BYU’s defense needs to improve. The Cougars kept getting cooked from the perimeter, allowing Idaho to shoot 57.1% from behind the arc as well as 50% from the field. Additionally, BYU struggled at times with the Vandals’ physicality, only winning the rebounding battle by a 33-28 margin.

The Cougars were a bit too streaky on offense. BYU had a few bursts of elite offensive play — going on separate scoring runs of 11-1, 14-3 and 13-2 in the contest — but when removing those three stretches, the Cougars were outscored 65-57. The continued thorn of free throws definitely factored into the inconsistency, as BYU missed another 11 shots from the charity stripe against Idaho.