Portland set a new record for 3’s made in the WCC torny by defeating SDU 92-74. I can tell you this; When a team is hitting 3s and are comfortable in that Vegas gym, they will have plenty of confidence in making the next shot. Monster advantage Portland. So it boils down to just one stat, can BYU defend the 3, end of subject.
What is the matter with this BYU teen come on? We are out, rebounding them and missing too many opportunities at the line and many offensive rebounds and now we are behind 13 points at ahalf time.
What a game! The first half was abysmal. They had no offensive identity, looked confused, everybody standing around waiting for somebody to make a play, throwing up random threes. And lots of turnovers. Johnson got two early fouls one of which was ticky tacky. It probably played a part in their offensive confusion. Rudy also looked a little lost out there as well. Playing a lot of hero ball. Thank goodness for Richie saunders or this is the last game of their season.
Second half they play amazing ball. Feeding it down to foos. Foos not looking confused but putting the ball up. All the sudden the offense is functioning. Portland cools down. Only three turnovers the second half.
Here’s this year’s Big 12 schedule. There are 10 teams in the conference this year. Next year, there will be 14 and the following year 12. I don’t think future conference tournament schedules have been discussed.
There’s upsides and downsides to BYU’s rotation. I’m not overly concerned about the minutes. If you look at this game Jaxon had 33, Spencer was second at 27, and Richie was third at 24. Bench player with more minutes than three starters! I remember multiple season past that the starters would all be mid to upper 30 minutes.
I saw no glaring issues with the officiating in this game except for one part of the first half when Foos got a charging call and the guy flopped and then BYU got a blocking call and was also called for a flop on an almost exact, identical play. I thought that was bad. I also thought the Portland player who was called for his third and then fourth (technical) foul was treated unfairly, Outside of that the game was called evenly both ways… as many of them are.
Had BYU been playing Gonzaga, no way they get calls. It wouldn’t matter what Gonzaga’s recruiting class was ranked, how good or bad a season they had or anything really. BYU isn’t getting any of those calls against the Zags, especially in their final unsuccessful year in the WCC.
Lets not get ahead of ourselves here. This game was won because of 3 things:
1 , the Biggie, Woods got 4 fouls and was rendered useless for the 2nd half
2 BYU out rebounded Portland 44-21 and they were still in striking distance. which leads me to why Pope has a Looooonnnng way to go before we can call him a good coach…
3 Robertson was Portlandia’s entire offense in the 2nd and Pope did little to stop his beating up on our smaller guard rotation. This game should of been a big O blowout for BYU but because of poor coaching, Portland made a game of it.
next up, LMU and their bruising Leaupepe aka. the mullet.
Keys to a BYU win. Robertson and Johnson need to get their 3s going, open up the middle for Foos to go to work. Williams has to get his game going. Portland was a match up problem, This LMU game Williams should have a good scoring game.
Defend Shelton!
Defend the middle and don’t let their 2 bigs get our key guys in foul trouble.
