They beat a decimated Hawaii team last night. What to know…
6 3’ Scottie Pippin Jr is their point, far and away their best player. (#2). He will take the most shots on that team, very good eye, good assist guy when he needs to be.
They have a strong big man that will give us problems, 6 10, #42 Brown. We will need Foos, Atiki does not have enough weight.
They play with way more swagger then their record suggests, kind of reminds me of Oregon (Before we knocked then into the next state). They also have a nasty player who will pull Dennis Rodman type tricks on our guys just to get under their skin, who Vandy will put on Lohner just to foul him out. Calling it, gonna happen.
Not a good 3 pt team. Should be an ugly game to watch. Would be very surprised if this game made it to the 70s.
BYU is a 70% favorite to win. EPSN 2 @ 10 Eastern
I like BYU vs Vandy. AB unlikely to have two bad games in a row. And last night he was good for all of 90 seconds when he scored 8 points and bad the rest of the game, so he’s due. Te’jon had some nice assists but IMO also looked really bad. We won because we got more garbage points inside and Gideon made a few threes that stopped minor USF runs.
My youngest daughter is a senior and works with the football team, but knows a lot of the athletes in other sports and follows the teams generally. She’s home for xmas and we watched together. We were laughing our heads off counting airballs by USF. If that game had been at the MC, the ROC would have had its way with those guys Our personal favorite was actually not one of the SEVEN airballs we counted, rather a basically uncontested 8 foot baseline jumper that went BEHIND THE BACKBOARD ON THE FLY .
I’m seeing some disturbing things of past years happening. We are seeing players fall to the ground, losing track of the ball while dribbling and falling to the ground without being bumped way too much. Stay up on their feet. The ball is round and the court is not carpet. They should be much better at dribbling.
Good post and relevant comments. See what happens when you focus on the game instead of disagreeing with everyone? Keep it going, the new year is just around the corner.
I couldn’t get the game it was on ESPNU but I did watch part of the liberty/Stanford game as well as Vandy/Hawaii. Be prepared for some really bad reffing in this tournament.
Find the last possession on Twitter. Down two, AB fouled at least 3 times in 5 seconds, ending with a massive hack across the arms on a shot from 5 feet out. On a game where every ticky tack foul was called. I’m embarrassed for the official who was staring right at the entire play and lacked the courage to make a very obvious call. This doesn’t matter long term because our team is likely not going very far with so little inside presence, but this was maybe the worst late game non call I have ever seen—because it wasn’t just one foul—it was at least three, by multiple defenders, ending with a big lowering his arms to clobber a shooter right on the arm right in front of the official. It was not a close call. The official should be ashamed of himself. If he even cares. Many of these guys’ egos are such that they simply don’t care about getting it right.
Ya, he was not vertical. I don’t see the other two. There’s space between Barcello’s head and the defender’s hand. But, that should have been two free throws. I didn’t like the play. We don’t do well going in with the bigs. I would have like to seen us run the offense and get a 3 off to win it. They were looking for us going inside.
Looking at the stats, two things stand out. 19 turnovers and Johnson 0-5 from 3’s. He’s better than that. Other than that, it was close in the stats as well.
We can’t keep on the refs. They are terrible in every game outside the Marriott Center. We have to keep turnovers to 10 per game. We won’t if we keep dribbling into traps at the baseline. 40% from 3’s is good. But, not one good shooter 0-5. He makes one and we may win. Another thing about Johnson. He does some good things at the rim getting those rebound put backs. But, he has the strangest lackadaisical turnovers too. Lucas makes some bad decisions as well.
BYU presses and turns the ball over when they are getting bad calls because they are struggling to find a way to compensate. Also, they aren’t playing that well right now. I’m watching the LIberty game and they are letting Liberty back into it.
Our personal favorite was actually not one of the SEVEN airballs we counted, rather a basically uncontested 8 foot baseline jumper that went BEHIND THE BACKBOARD ON THE FLY 
