Now the real basketball season starts. this thanksgiving tournament called the Rady’s Children’s Invitational features 4 really good teams. It starts off Thursday, 12.30 with #8 Purdue vs. NC St. Purdue no longer has Eddy and NC St no longer has Big Body DJ Burns but both teams are still lethal. Purdue of favored to win and would face the winner of the 2:30 match of BYU v.s Miss.
BYU might be favored but only a basket. Ol Miss will be a handful. Why
1 Ol miss starts all Seniors and Jrs.
2 their top player s 5’11 point guard, Murray, a Sr. Top point man, 6’1 Pedulla, also a Sr.
3 They are going to launch plenty of 3s, Ol Miss is not a tall team but they have played together for years now.
4 they are fast, good at causing TOs but so is BYU
5 They are 35% from 3land, but so is BYU
6 This game boils down to maturity, Ol Miss vs. length and talent, BYU.
Going with BYU in San Diego, lots of BYU fans. 1st one to 70 wins
Fouss second best player on the court.
Demin had some good moments but as you said.
No answer defensively for driving guards - like every byu opponent for last 50 years. Catching an and Saunders 2 nd half no shows.
Hall not up to speed yet- adjusting to sharing directing traffic with Demin.
Fouss is a fun watch- needs more minutes than Keita.
A game to learn A LOT from.
And Knell? Two clutch shots and rest of his too many minutes were pretty subpar and cost us points.
Looking back it appears to me that Purdue, Mississippi, and BYU are all about equal at this point. NC State is a bit behind.
None of the four had played a decent schedule until this weekend, Purdue-Alabama being the only minor exception…
Purdue probably has the highest upside…continuity and expectations/mind set of winning from a final four team combined with young blood and a HoF wannabe coach looking like they will be the class of the admittedly down year B10.
MIssissippi I would guess is pretty close to their ceiling. Coach that peaked out just below HoF level but that any program would be happy to have. Experienced team playing together will be a tough out in every game. Will be rock solid in the nation’s best conference this year SEC.
BYU–huge potential, Saunders, Hall, Demin, Keita, Catchings starting seems likely to be the highest upside combination going forward, though Boskovitch might be knocking for more playing time later. The other five or six regular players all with upsides strong enough to earn playing time for a coach who is used to playing a long bench…
Coach new to college bball is showing a bit…but his continuing the deep bench practices of Pope is a good sign. His ability to get better talent/athleticism than any BYU coach is remarkable. Though Frank Arnold and the early Rose come to mind as coaches who started great and then petered off…Watt’s HoF career somehow got a second breath which garnered the HoF inclusion…so hope exists.
Defense plenty of room for improvement…Coach Young’s background on offense is showing…he has mentioned, and his players have mentioned, more than once the specifics of what he wants his team to be known for, and it is exclusively offensive…
Offense is jelling obviously the Hall Demin combination needs to get completely in sync and needs improvement to get above average in the B12.
As for the B12, Arizona and Baylor are dropping but still look better than BYU, Utah seems to have been underrated considerably. BYU Utah games may well decide how far above or below average either team’s record will be in conference.
BYU’s Achilles heal is defense; unless it can improve enough to be competitive against the top half of the league BYU will not be in the top half of the league.
Defense always needs to improve. In basketball, defense is generally behind the offense. So, I’m not worried at this point. We get better with every game. Same with the offense. KY used some new plays in the offense and will continue to as the year goes on. There needs to be more consistence on offense for sure. We have the greatest upside in my opinion.
Good analysis Harold. I thought our D improved significantly from the Miss game to the NC State game. We have very close friends who are big NC State donors and mega fans, so that game was extra fun for me!
Everyone noticed our fast starts in these two games with our starting lineup, with big drop offs when Richie comes out of the game. I agree it’s good for KY to use the bench a lot right now. Bosko and Fouss are clearly B12 talent. We see KY really believing Dawson can be the 3rd ball handler. KY is giving Knell a LOT of space to prove himself. He failed last year in B12 play. So far he’s at 30% from deep vs our real opponents. I think if he can’t shoot close to 40% from deep he should be garbage time only. I’d like to see Trey Stewart get some minutes due to his elite defense.
I was disappointed not to see more two man games with Fouss against NCS like in the Ole Miss game. And, we can’t go up 24 and then give up easy baskets. Keba played better but gives us little offense except dunks. We will need lots of offense when league play begins.
to see how much work BYU has to do to even get near the bubble.
A NET rating of 48 means improving by about 15 to get on the likely positive side of the bubble; an improvement of more like 20 to be safely off the bubble.
Yes plenty of time…but the B12 teams this year are not their normal dominant, and the lesser half of the league will not provide much of computer lift without dominant wins…
The team needs to win the second half of games as resoundingly as they have so often been winning the first half.
And they have one more shot at getting a truly impressive non-conference win, unfortunately against a team that has not been as impressive as expected.
BYU needs to not toy with them but simply treat them like one of the lesser teams on the schedule that have calculated up to the dismal non-conference ranking so far.