Utah upends No. 1 seed BYU to reach final

The Utah Utes twice had trouble inbounding the ball in the final eight seconds. One pass went off a Brigham Young player’s hands out of bounds, and the other was tipped by a Cougars defender right into the hands of freshman Michelle Plouffe, who was not the intended target.

No matter. Her 15-foot shot at the buzzer gave fifth-seeded Utah a 50-49 victory over the top-seeded Cougars on Friday in the women’s Mountain West Conference tournament semifinals at the Thomas & Mack Center.

With their third victory in four days, the Utes (17-16) advanced to their third straight title game. They will play second-seeded Texas Christian, which beat New Mexico 61-40, at 1 p.m. today.

Plouffe grabbed Janita Badon’s bounced inbounds pass with 1.5 seconds left and sank the shot that completed a comeback from a nine-point deficit.

“Yeah, that was not designed,” Plouffe said. “But I think it just got tipped off someone’s hands and rolled my way.”

“I would first like to thank Plouffe for saving me,” Badon said. “I just threw it in because I saw Michelle stood there, and then I think it was (Kristen) Riley tipped it and the ball went rolling to Plouffe. I was like, ‘Yeah, I meant to do that. I’ll take the credit.’ ”

Riley led BYU (23-8) with 15 points. Mindy Bonham added 13 for the Cougars, who had won 12 in a row but were playing their first game with the league’s staggered bracket that gives the top two seeds byes until the semifinals.

Iwalani Rodrigues’ 3-pointer brought Utah to 49-48 with 47 seconds left. After BYU came up empty, the Utes called timeout with 8.6 seconds left. Badon nearly threw away the inbounds pass, but BYU’s Jazmine Foreman touched it, and Utah kept possession.

Rodrigues’ jumper was short, but the ball went off BYU again, setting up Plouffe’s game winner.

■ Texas Christian 61, New Mexico 40 — Helena Sverrisdottir scored 25 points as TCU advanced to its first MWC tourney championship game.

Micah Garoutte added 10 points for the Horned Frogs (22-9), and Rachel Rentschler had 10 rebounds.

The Lobos (13-18) shot just 23 percent from the field.