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Provo • With his team mired in a four-game losing streak, BYU coach Dave Rose changed his starting lineup for the Cougars' game against San Diego on Saturday night.
Skyler Halford, a transfer from Salt Lake Community College, got his first career start, replacing Matt Carlino at the shooting guard position.
Carlino had started in BYU's first 15 games, the first 12 at point guard and the last three at shooting guard.
The junior said Thursday that he was not comfortable in his new role — sophomore Kyle Collinsworth has done the bulk of the ball-handling — and wanted to be moved back to point guard.
"I think the thing for me is I didn't know how different [shooting guard] would be from the point, playing the two," Carlino said. "And I think you can see it how there if you watch."
Prior to Saturday's game, Rose had started Carlino, Collinsworth, Tyler Haws, Nate Austin and Eric Mika in 11 straight games.
Oregon's escapes
After beating BYU 100-96 in Eugene on Dec. 21, Oregon has played just twice. The Ducks routed Morgan State 97-76 the following weekend and then snuck past Utah 70-68 in overtime in Salt Lake City on Thursday.
Up to No. 10 in the polls, the Ducks play at No. 20 Colorado on Sunday.
"We should have won that game," BYU guard Tyler Haws said of the pre-Christmas meeting at Oregon. "We were ahead for 38 minutes. But we still lost, and that was the start of this little lapse, I guess. But what has happened has happened. We can't hang our heads or feel bad. We got to learn from it. There is still a lot of the season left. We got to just keep fighting. That's what our coaches are good at, that's what our team is good at, and that's what we are going to do."
Zags on top, again
After just two weekends of conference play, every WCC team except Gonzaga has a loss. Pepperdine, which downed BYU 80-74 on Monday, was unbeaten heading into Saturday's round of games, but fell 76-66 to San Francisco. The Dons scored 57 points in the second half.
Pepperdine (10-6, 3-1) plays at BYU on Thursday.
Twitter: @drewjay