After losses to So. Dakota State and UVU, BYU appears to have righted the ship. No one expected us to beat Creighton in Vegas and certainly Utah after their red-hot start. I point out that Creighton was without their all conference 7’ Kilkbrenner, the fact that they run their entire offense through, means we caught them at the right time and Utah had only 1 road game, an overtime win vs. Wa St., also means they were possibly overrated as road warriors.
But…we did knock off 2 teams inside the top 25 net and here is the reason.
Substituting Hall for Rudi and not for the reasons, one might think; Hall running with the ones makes perfect sense. He now has 2 game winners, proves he has all the confidence in the world. But as a true Fr., he is also going to run Pope’s script every chance he gets, yet is good enough to create if there is a busted play. It makes perfect sense to run Hall with the 1s.
You put Hall with the 2s and his production goes down, more turnovers.
Rudi was plagued by Turn Overs, it was not working with the 1s. Could it be that Rudi’s talent was to just go off scoring wise? Running with the 2s proves my point. He is now free to hunt his shots. Running with the 1s, he had to think pass 1st, shoot 2nd. And in the grand scheme of things, Teams have to double him when he gets hot, so sedentary 3 point specialists, like Waterman and Robinson, get wide open looks. Toolson, Saunders all benefit from Rudi’s scoring runs.
as a side note, Waterman did play inside a fair amount when Atiki got 3 fouls in a minute and Foos’s foul troubles. He did not scure much, Saunders as well, but they sure defended Utah’s height enough for the win.