Okay, I hate to start off a post like this, but all you guys who have dogged and complained about Averette can line up to apologize right now. The guy made it happen at the end of this game and was a difference maker in BYU securing their first win at St. Mary’s since 2014. But who got it started when they needed a kick in the rear? It was Gideon, after Pope made the decision to put him on Kuhse (not Bob Cousy) and it completely disrupted everything that had been working for the Gaels to that point. I don’t remember the exact number but I think St. Mary’s scored 2 points in the last 8 or 9 minutes and it all started with GIdeon on defense. Up until then, the Cougars struggled to finish sets, couldn’t score easy shots and had a hard time hitting free throws… again. This can be a frustrating team to watch but somehow Pope finds a way and the team responds to him.
That’s 2 good games Gideon has played in a row. He a lockdown defender. The rest of the team also stepped up down the stretch on defense and a lot of hustle. I want to see Haarms in at the end when the other team is fouling. Not Harward. Need free throw shooters.
Tough game to watch and getting a win shooting 10% from 3’s is fortunate. BA was good down the stretch and Lohner had 9 boards and 2 critical free throws. BYU needs George getting significant minutes, just for his defense if anything else and his athleticism. SMC already has 2 conference losses and hasn’t even played Gonzaga yet. I wasn’t impressed by the Gaels at all, probably the worst team I’ve seen them have in a while. It’s BYU and SF for 2nd place in the WCC
Well, you got 1/2 of that statement right, hahahaha
George FINALLY gets to play in crunch time, SHUTS down Kuhse, Barcello shuts down Johnson, SMC’s only threat. Game.
Pope also limited our outside shooting to focus on Rim play, we dominate. We also locked down their open looks from outside and stopped the one horse pony (sorry Biden,I keep plagiarizing you)
Bennett plays his studs too long, BYU’s bench is too deep. They gassed, we walk over them the final 5 minutes.They got 1 field goal but then, You mentioned that
Boy, you said a mouth full . SMC is pathetic inside, we make it tough on there outside looks and Bennett has no bench. He will win a bunch of games just on his ridiculous coaching skills but we have Pope. Game Plan, Defend the 3, kill them inside. Gas out their starters, Win
SF, can we stop their 2 guards, will they miss all their outside shots, like SMC? Will this be BYU’s only loss outside of Gonzaga?
Sorry Jim but you won’t get an apology from me on this one. I dogged BA because BA wasn’t taking care of the ball. He gets full credit for his play last night. He had a stretch of 8 games where he had 21 assists and 25 TO–ABSOLUTELY NOT acceptable from a PG, and worth getting criticized for. However, in the last four games BA has 15 asst. and 7 TO. So he went from 2.6apg and 3.1tpg to 3.75apg and 1.75tpg. I give BA FULL CREDIT for taking better care of the ball, and Pope FULL CREDIT for working with him to make it happen. BA is too good a player to have more TOs than Assists–his ratio as of 4 games ago was the worst of his 4 year career.
I 100% agree with you about Gideon–and Lohner. Those two SHUT DOWN their guys on D and owned the skies. Gideon also made a couple buckets that literally no other guy on our team is athletic enough to even attempt without getting swatted.
George played most of his minutes in the last 10 minutes of the game.
Kuhse scored ZERO points during that span.
George finishes shots that nobody else on the team could take, because he plays above the rim and hangs in the air longer than his defender.
3 or 4 of Lohner’s rebounds were boards that no one else on the team has the combination of strength and hops to bring down.
Let me give Kuhse credit: his perimeter and on-ball defense on Barcello was smothering, and credit to Barcello for being aggressive and finding another way to score.
Let me give credit to the officials: thank you for not ruining a good game with 50 ticky tack foul calls.
As I said yesterday, these two games are a chance for Pope to establish his team as the clear #2 Big Dog in the Rec League. So far so good.
Vs USF: pound the rock inside, attack the rim, then do it some more.
The loss knocked SMC for a loop in the NET: out of quadrant 1 to quadrant 2. BYU could use a few more solid SMC wins, USF wins for that matter, so that quadrant 1 will be full of wins for BYU.
Kenpom and Bartorvik are no longer part of the calculation.
SoS: The strength of schedule is based on rating every game on a team’s schedule for how hard it would be for an NCAA tournament-caliber team to win.
Efficiency is a combination of Kenpom and Bartorvik adjusting for The adjusted efficiency is a team’s net efficiency, adjusted for strength of opponent and location (home/away/neutral) across all games played.
So this looks as close to an optimal way to determine what the committee looks at as far as current stats can take it.
Pope loves his stats so it should be onward and upwards from here.
True, and he gassed out playing hard the entire game. With George on him, who BTW was fresh, he just could not do a thing down the stretch.
I was pretty miffed in the 1st half, not one call on the hip checking from SMC, pretty much every single play. In the second, we were treated fairly.
SF is much better then SMC, more speed at guard, and their bigs can hit open 3s (Lohner and pretty much any of our bigs generally do not get out fast enough to cover long shots), If SF is hitting 3s, could be a long night.
Listened to Pomeroy talking about BYU on ESPN radio today. Our BYU guy was peppering him with questions about why was BYU so far down the list at 58. His answer, Well the blowout from USC didn’t help you, hahaha. Is BYU a dance team? Pomeroy, “I think so”. Bubble right now.
For me BYU is a bubble team. If we win at SF. We move to safely in to a 10 seed and our schedule favors us all the way to the Gonzaga game and that really does not hurt us, they are on another level above EVERYBODY.
2 things that stop BYU from being a dangerous team. !) we have no go to guys on the team. Don’t tell me Barcello is one, he rarely makes his own shot. Barcello is dangerous if someone could feed him the ball but then we don’t have a TJ this year. 2) We struggle against big powerful guards. All of our losses come from those types of teams. Pope using Gideon George may of solved some of that problem