PROVO, Utah (AP) \u2014 Kingston Flemings scored 11 of his 19 points in the second half to help No. 8 Houston beat No. 16 BYU 77-66 on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Chris Cenac, Jr. added 16 points and Emanuel Sharp had 14 for Houston (21-2, 9-1 Big 12), which has won four in a row to stay within a game of No. 1 Arizona in the Big 12 standings. The Cougars shot 50% from the field after halftime.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
AJ Dybantsa scored 28 points and Rob Wright III added 17 for the Cougars (17-6, 5-5), who dropped their fourth straight game.<\/p>\n
BYU got Houston into the bonus quickly in the second half, but shot just 16 of 28 from the free-throw line.<\/p>\n
Flemings made four baskets to power a 14-5 run that put Houston up 68-59 with 3:06 left. The visiting Cougars scored three second-chance baskets during the run to gradually pull away from BYU.<\/p>\n
Houston used efficient offense and stifling interior defense to build a double-digit lead before halftime.<\/p>\n
After Richie Saunders and Wright made back-to-back 3s to help pull BYU within one, Houston countered with a 9-0 spurt to extend its lead to 28-18. Flemings bookended the run with a pair of baskets.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Dybantsa bookended a run of four straight baskets and added four free throws to help BYU trim the deficit to single digits before halftime. His driving layup that sparked the run ended a scoring drought lasting 4:44 for the Cougars.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back baskets from Wright capped a 14-4 run that put BYU up 51-48 early in the second half.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Houston: at Utah on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
BYU: at Baylor on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PROVO, Utah (AP) \u2014 Kingston Flemings scored 11 of his 19 points in the second half to help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[14862,17321,3119,56,58,57,26195,53325,64306,3111],"class_list":{"0":"post-156108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-aj-dybantsa","9":"tag-byu","10":"tag-emanuel-sharp","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-headlines","13":"tag-houston-news","14":"tag-kingston-flemings","15":"tag-richie-saunders","16":"tag-rob-wright-iii","17":"tag-the-cougars"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}