They have played all away games against top 25 teams. They have played them very close. This team does this every year and end up in the NCAA’s.
This game will be much like UMASS and maybe Alabama. Don’t get hung up on the 0-12. Especially since you think Rose is a terrible coach because he isn’t playing Dastrup enough.
When they take close up shots of Dastrup when he comes out of the games he is winded. He’s not yet in top condition to play 30 minutes.
They have the number one hardest strength of schedule in the country.
Their RPI is 167 and will go up because they will start winning.
BYU’s is 48 and will only go up with wins too.
The way the RPI works the largest component of the formula is the team’s own winning percentage.
The second largest component of the formula is your opponents winning percentage. The third largest component of the formula is your opponent’s opponent’s winning percentage.
The first and third are the major reasons why their RPI will go up. Both their own winning percentage will rise and their opponent’s opponent’s winning percentage will rise.
BYU’s can only rise with BYU wins because BYU’s opponent’s winning percentage is going to go down…thank you very much to the weaker teams in the conference…BYU’s opponent’s opponent’s winning percentage is about the same as it is now because of the weakness of the strength of schedule…
RPI is completely controllable.
win your games
schedule teams that will win their games…this is called strength of schedule
check your opponents strength of schedule…this is the hardest part for BYU because …this has been written about ad nauseum basically it boils down to the need for BYU basketball like Texas Southern’s to provide funds for the school athletic program. But unlike Texas Southern BYU also has a large home fan base that provides money and would raise the roof if BYU spent too much time on the road pre-conference.
nonsense, pure nonsense.
They play the hardest schedule in the country. Check that out. And, they have played the top teams and almost won. If you think it will be easy you are mistaken. Fortunately the coaches and players know better and won’t be looking past them.
Once again, you observe things from a lazy referee’s mindset of jelly donuts and egg nog. Mine is observed from a coach’s understanding. 10 years of high school basketball and you refereed mostly elementary girl’s basketball 
He isn’t in shape enough yet for 30 minutes. Also, he admitted in an interview that he’s still not clicking on the defensive side of the game yet. The other aspect is in WCC play, we will need to play with 4 guards in most games. Childs will play the 5 most of the time. Until Dastrup can play better transition basketball and react quicker on defense his time will remain 10-15 minutes. If he does better and continues to get in better shape he will get 20-25 minutes. He’s just better and more productive than Worthington. But Nixon is a much better defender at this point than Dastrup.
This article below here they only mention one line about 4 players making double figures scoring and Dastrup was one of them. But the rest of it was about starters and couple of small gaurds. Nothing about Payton Dastrup (PD) performance.
Now I found 2nd part in the same DeseretNews, the writer decided to put PD about him below. That 1st article really puzzled me because PD did help his team to put the game ahead in a hurry and nothing of what he did.
I or WE are going to go nuts of what Dave Rose is doing going forward once wcc starts!
Between 2008 and 2015, no Mid-Major school with an RPI over 50 was awarded an At-Large.
BYU is currently on that edge. Depending on whose RPI you look at 47, 48, 0r 49. The NCAA keeps the software private but makes the formula public and so inputs vary a bit more at this time of year than later in the year.
To comfortably get an invitation to the Championship Tournament, the team needs to get into a top 30 RPI.
Winning all the games they are supposed to gets them to approximately a 40.
They must steal some games from SMC and Gonzaga to get to to 30 and feel comfortable about an invite.
SMC is playing poorly against a soft schedule this year. BYU absolutely needs to beat them 2 out of 3 this year.
Gonzaga didn’t do us any favors losing to SDSU last night.
To be confident in an invite, BYU needs to beat them 2/3 as well.
of course if the second one is in the WCC tournament final then the invite is a done deal. But Rose has never won the tournament for the invite.
So I love the NIT…NIT Championship is the goal…
well that and two improvements…on the floor improvement so losses to Bama and UTA do not occur next year and as important sadly a better OoC strength of schedule so the team has a margin of error wider than the knife’s edge it has this year.
Harold, that is really good work. thank you. as you were writing this, I was responding to you in another thread but talking about the very same thing. wow, right?
I am shocked that Gonzaga lost last night. anyone watch the game? Why the hell didn’t ESPN air it? Gotta be a reason as in fouls or injury?
Yes, SMC has done us no favors by their weak schedule but then, SMC NEVER plays away from home and NEVER plays anyone in the pre-season. Bennett has his methods and that is why he always has this great record but few invites to the dance.
BYU is in good shape going into WCC play. No real weak spots on the core of the team. Low post is steller with Childs and now emerging Dastrup., Guard play is the best we have seen since Jimmer/Emery. We hide the weak side foreward spot with an exceptional powerful guard in Bryant. Nixon could really help us when he gets well. We have Cannon and Dastrup coming off the bench and other teams have to freak seeing that. You can’t guard Childs with just one guy, we are hitting over 40% from 3 when they do double Childs. A lot to smile about.
After looking at the SDSU-Zag game, two things jump out at me.
-
Few played his starters too long, 4 or the 5 had over 34 minutes…way too much, they were gassed.
Few only subbed one bench guy, Hachimura, for 19 minutes. Fisher only played one starter more than 30 minutes and he played 8 guys to Few’s 6. -
3 of Few’s starters fouled out and Williams had 4 fouls. Very strange to me as I have always thought of Few as the best. SDSU shot 80% for 21-26 FTs. game should not have been even close but Gonzaga got into foul trouble and had to go easy on defending. I wonder if the “Nose” was officiating? hahaha
If Few does not trust more players than 6 and I have seen Tillie and Hachimura do plenty of dumb stuff, Gonzaga is way overrated in my book. Something to watch.
NIT is no goal. That’s like hoping to make it to the Terrestrial Kingdom instead of working hard to make to the Celestial Kingdom. Don’t shoot for mediocre.
If you think the NIT is unreasonable as a goal…
Please explain a path that gets BYU to the NCAA Championship Tournament other than winning the WCC post-season tournament. BYU could, though it won’t, lose every game from here on out and still have just as much shot at getting into the NCAA (winning the conference tournament) as of only loses 2 more games…
Both NCAA & NIT are better than nothing. I don’t know what Hopper trying to say which Kingdom has to do with what kingdom in sports vs Spiritual Kingdom has to do with it.
Yes, NIT we can get many games at the MC if we get a higher seed and go as far we can get to MSG Championship game.
As for NCAA, if we get in this year and stay consistent every year getting in then something special might happened. And I know, it has been “One and Done” many times. But wcc is killing us and Dave Rose has been out coach for a long time by Few and Bennett.
The only thing I worry that those big boys “P5 Commissioners” might damage the “NCAA Tournament” like they did in college football. They want to eliminate G5 & smaller schools “Cinderella” in the NCAA Tournament which they have talked about few years ago.
Are you shooting for a lesser Kingdom than the top Kingdom? You can win the NIT and you are the 66th best team in the nation. Why shoot for that?
Just keep winning. 3 will go from the WCC this season.
Unlikely 3, more like 1, why smc playing weak sos mostly all at home gym. And we BYU are playing not so good non conferance games. So if smc and BYU lose in the wcc tourney, ONLY ONE WCC WILL ENTER THE NCAA!
Scott, maybe I should of said nothing. You see I made a mistake making this last post. Harold and others brought it up of where or projecting where BYU going to be playing once wcc tourney is finish. Maybe I should have said - “One Game at a Time.” Our next game is Texas Southern and hoping that I will see Dastrup get more than 15 minutes playing time. As I got older and became tired of this “WHAT IF” where we are going to play “ncaa or nit.”
And Scott, continue your fun time telling your Cougar Fans friends about which Kingdom that BYU should be playing. Keep it up and have fun 
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wisely said…
if the team that showed up on Thursday shows up against Texas Southern, it will look like Mike Davis is the HoF Coach instead of Rose…
Davis at IU, UAB, and even TS is not near the coach that Rose is so here’s hoping Rose earns his money today.
and 15 minutes for DP
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Teaching the team and getting it to play better per possession would go a long way to help:
“TCU, the Horned Frogs have a top-15 offence and top-60 defence, setting TCU up nicely for a potential at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.”
The sentence when edited for BYU’s current reality becomes:
BYU, the Cougars have a top 65 offence and a top 90 defence, setting BYU up nicely for a potential at-large bid to the NIT.
The offence is only a starting to get good enough to qualify the team for the NCAA Championship.
The defence is a long way away still from being good enough to qualify the team for the NCAA Tournament.
Rose used to regularly have teams with top 30 offences. Less regularly, but not uncommonly he also used to have teams with NCAA worthy defences.
Stinking up the Marriott Center the way they did against Idaho State is passing up opportunities to get the team to the stats that will help overcome the retching schedule they’ve been saddled with this year.
Unfortunately, they continue to play as if the Ws mean much. The team is playing as if the Ws that come in conference play mean something. With a Strenght of Schedule that is barely average, the team must show improvement every game…not Ws every game. The Idaho State game was a step backwards…
I am pleased that the bench is playing as well as it is this year…though I fear that once again the idea that it is performing so well is that the competition has been so weak. If the bench starts playing as well as the starters, (yes there are certain exceptions), then the team would have top 30 offensive and defensive stats that will help, sadly only help, the team overcome the perception that is the reality.
The Strength of Schedule demands that the team not only get the Ws but also that it continue to improve on per possession stats to have a prayer of getting an at-large bid.
I’m not sure the Coaches let alone the team understand how badly the SoS is setting them up this year.
I doubt that the coaches have adjusted to the new reality that the per-possession stats are at least as important to the selection committee as the per-game stats. If the coaches do understand this, they still are working on getting the team to understand it, because the team’s performance on the floor is not reflecting this important selection committee reality.
The Gonzaga watchers, who like BYU watchers in days of old, care intensely about how well the rest of the conference is doing, regularly echo Few’s comments that the other team’s schedules must be bucked up for the conference to improve its at-large invitations.
on offence the Cougs played well enough on to be a top 30 squad in only these games:
Missippi Valley --against the worst team in the nation
Idaho State
Utah Valley–the teams single best game of the season
NIagara
Illinois State
every other game was offensively worse than a team that deserves an NCAA Invitation.
on defence
Utah Valley
Princeton
Utah State
Mississippi Valley
Utah
UMass
Illinois State
though the latter two would be iffy.
even against the low quality of competition the team has played it has played less than half the time at a level sufficient to warrant an NCAA invitation.
The team needs to up its game. Hammer the teams that should be hammered. This is mostly on the defensive side of the ball. not that the offence does not need improvement.
Get the starters playing consistently at NCAA tournament quality.
Get the bench to come in and play the way DP has the last two games, raising the level of the play on the floor not lowering it.
I go to post a response and I get this nonsense message.
“This topic is clearly important to you – you’ve posted more than 24% of the replies here. Are you sure you’re providing adequate time for other people to share their points of view, too?”
The moderators of this board are kind of clueless. This kind of stuff makes me want to laugh it is so ridiculous. Aro kind of went off on it and all I could think of was how much I agreed with what he was saying.
Anyhow, to your comments grasshopper… I disagree with most of it. So in wcc play, vs. the 2 most important teams Gonzaga and St. Mary’s… if BYU plays 4 guards they will get destroyed. Also, Dastrup is by far the most productive player on the team for the amount of time he gets to play and he is a much better defender than Seljaas and Worthington who don’t really understand the game that well but see way more court time. Nixon is not a much better defender either. If you really think that being in better shape is what is keeping Dastrup from playing more you are crazy. Don’t forget, which you always seem to do when we discuss things, that he has averaged 6 minutes a game. Are you willing to say that it is because he isn’t in shape? That’s pure baloney.
Lastly, one thing that shows me how clueless fans, announcers, etc. are is that people are surprised with how well Dastrup does play when he gets the chance. Most fans are pretty illiterate about the game overall. It is amazing that the guy is 26-31 shooting the ball. I don’t remember a player that was this accurate or good with so few minutes. The whole situation defies logic.
“You’ve already replied 3 times to @grasshopper in this particular topic. Have you considered replying to other people in the discussion, too? A great discussion involves many voices and perspectives. If you’d like to continue your conversation with this particular user at length, send them a personal message”
LOL, these messages are getting pretty comical.
Anyhow, all religious references aside, it doesn’t seem to matter what goal BYU has, as I am sure the goal each year is to make the ncaa tournament. You can have lofty goals and we all should, but if you aren’t willing to do what it takes to make it, what’s the point? It is a poor reference grasshopper. They could make it this year but they aren’t doing themselves any favors with a crappy schedule and wasting opportunities to get key players more time so they can help when it matters. If you do that year after year, how is the result going to change?