LAS VEGAS — Saint Mary’s almost certainly is headed to the NCAA Tournament, but the Gaels won’t be on much of a roll.
The 20th-ranked and No. 2 seeded Gaels lost 85-72 to No. 3 seed BYU in the semifinals of the West Coast Conference tournament on Monday night in Las Vegas.
The Gaels (28-5) have lost three of their past seven games after a 24-2 start.
Jordan Ford led the Gaels with a career-high 27 points and Jock Landale scored 23, but it wasn’t enough to hold off the Cougars (24-9), who now face top-seeded Gonzaga in the championship game on Tuesday night.
Gaels coach Randy Bennett said the most important thing for his team to do before Selection Sunday is, “Get rested.”
“(Emmett) Naar is still playing on a bum wheel, so get him all the way back. Get Ford healthy. We gotta get our mojo back. We got beat, and that doesn’t happen often, so we need our confidence back and to feel like we deserve it.”
“We have no control. I feel good about it, let’s get healthy and get a few practices and get ready to play whenever we get the next chance again.”
The victory was particularly satisfying for the Cougars because they had lost the previous five meetings against the Gaels and suffered a 31-point loss to SMC in the WCC tournament semifinals a year ago.
Monday, Yoeli Childs scored a career-high 33 points for BYU. He was 13 of 18 from the field, including hitting all three 3-point attempts. He also had six rebounds. BYU shot 61 percent from the field.
“Our defense has been holding teams to 40-41 percent and tonight we were 60 percent, so we were not very good defensively. I don’t know why. Just got to have a better effort,” Bennett said. “We got out hustled, I think we gave up ten points alone on just hustle plays on transition. We would turnover the ball, we would come back and then we would get out run. You gotta hustle and not give teams easy baskets. Yoeli Childs played really well. Jock was in foul trouble, which definitely affected us a little bit.
“The thing we can control is defense on the court, and we did not do that tonight. We were not even close to being at the top of our game defensively.”
Landale fouled out with 21 seconds left, and only was able to grab four rebounds. Landale committed his third foul with 1:49 left before halftime and fourth with 8:39 left in the game.
“Every loss we’ve had, I have been in foul trouble, so I gotta stay out of foul trouble and stop making silly plays,” Landale said. “I think there was a couple that didn’t go my way tonight. I have to understand that in order for us to win, I can’t be getting in foul trouble. We have a lot of weapons on this team but it’s something I can’t do.”
BYU jumped out to an early 11-4 lead as the Gaels opened slow offensively. SMC missed its first five attempts from beyond the arc and shot 38 percent from the floor before Hermanson nailed the Gaels’ first three-pointer at the 12:55 mark. Ford scored seven of the Gaels’ first 12 points as SMC captured the lead, 15-13, off Calvin Hermanson’s second three-pointer with 11 and half minutes remaining in the half.
The Gaels extended their lead to 29-25, but the Cougars ended the first half on a 16-8 run to take a four-point lead at halftime.
After the Cougars led 41-37 at intermission, they expanded their lead to 67-54 with 7:35 left. Saint Mary’s cut it to 71-65 with 3:24 left, but the Cougars’ hot shooting helped them pulled away in the final three minutes.