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Las Vegas • The Zags got their revenge on Tuesday night, while the Cougars were reminded again which men's basketball team rules the West Coast Conference.

Fired up after BYU ended its 41-game home winning streak 10 days ago, Gonzaga took the Cougars behind the woodshed in the WCC championship game at Orleans Arena and delivered a 91-75 beatdown to re-establish itself as the premier power in the league.

"It felt like we would make a run, and they would answer it, and we would weather the storm and hang around," said BYU guard Tyler Haws. "But you gotta give that team credit. They played really well tonight."

A year after blowing out an ACL in the 2014 championship game against Gonzaga, BYU's Kyle Collinsworth returned with a vengeance, scoring 28 points and almost single-handedly keeping the Cougars in the game while Haws missed long stretches due to early foul trouble.

But the Cougars (25-9) couldn't sustain the runs offensively, and seemingly left their recently improved defense behind with no answers inside for GU's bulldozing Przemek Karnowski and Domantas Sabonis. Those two combined for 27 points and 10 rebounds while looking like men among boys against BYU's young front court.

"Those games are rough," said Collinsworth, talking about the inconsistent way the game was officiating. "Unfortunately, their bigs had big nights and overpowered us down the stretch."

The Cougars will now play the waiting game until Sunday, wondering if they did enough — and were not shown up too much on national television by the nation's No. 7-ranked team — to get into the NCAA Tournament via an at-large bid.

Neither BYU coach Dave Rose nor his players lobbied much for a bid in their postgame remarks, although when told that Gonzaga coach Mark Few said the Cougars are definitely a tournament team, Rose replied: "I think Mark's a really smart man and a really good coach."

There was another scary moment for BYU, similar to last year when Collinsworth went down.

Senior guard Skyler Halford crumpled to the floor, favoring his left knee, with 26 seconds remaining. Rose said Halford was diagnosed with a lower leg nerve contusion and did not elaborate.

The coach picked up his second technical foul of the season midway through the second half with Gonzaga leading 67-59, ripping off his jacket and screaming at referee Michael Greenstein for what he perceived to be a variety of blown calls.

"He coaches with a lot of passion, and he wants to win worse than anyone," Haws said. "…There was a lot of emotion in the building."

BYU was competitive well into the second half, staying with the Zags (32-2) despite being horrendously outmanned inside. But Gonzaga broke away in the final eight minutes, much to the delight of the mostly-partisan Bulldog crowd of 8,585.

"We made some tough plays," said Few. "If you're going to beat BYU, you have to put your hard-hat on and be tough. They just come at you."

Haws scored with 8:51 remaining to cut the deficit to 71-65, but Sabonis scored inside and Gary Bell Jr. hit a 3-pointer and the game started to get away. GU's Kyle Wiltjer was named the tourney's Most Outstanding Player after scoring 18 points on 7 of 12 shooting, and Kevin Pangos added 16 and Bell 15 as six Zags reached double figures.

"It was probably a pretty entertaining game to watch," Rose said.

The Cougars played again without their third-leading scorer, Anson Winder, who suffered a sprained knee in the first half of Saturday's win over Santa Clara.

"That's kinda been the story of our season," Rose said. …We fought to the finish, as a group. I think that's probably the best thing about this team right now, is they compete really hard together as a group."

The Cougars were lucky to trail only 48-42 at halftime, considering Haws picked up two early fouls and spent much of the half on the bench. Rose gambled and sent him back into the game with about 12 minutes remaining in the half, and he quickly scored seven points after the Cougars had fallen behind 17-10.

The Cougars never caught the Zags, but came within a hair of doing so when Chase Fischer missed a 3-pointer after Collinsworth missed a free throw with the Cougars trailing 33-30. A night after hitting 6 of 12 3-pointers against Portland, Fischer was 0-for-4 from long range against the Zags and 3-for-12 from the field.

BYU's starters were 18-for-51 from the field, while the bench players were 8-for-16, led by Halford's 13 points.

drew@sltrib.com Twitter: @drewjay —

Storylines

R Kyle Collinsworth scores a career-high 28 points.

• BYU drops to 0-5 in conference tournament finals under coach Dave Rose.

• Gonzaga outscores BYU 34-20 in the paint and gets revenge for a 73-70 loss to BYU in Spokane 10 days ago