Not ready for prime time

The curious case of the disappearing Fischer: Grubell made a big point of this in his Tweets, “in games BYU has won, BYU is shooting at a 50% rate, in loses, it dropped all the way down to 46%”. He goes on to say that Fischer has disappeared in every important game except Stanford.

I thought this was the year when BYU avoided the pitfall of losing to WCC bottom feeders and got a good seed in the NCAA to advance to at least the sweet 16. Not going to happen anytime soon.

Here is what is so sad about this team, Haws, KC and Winder just don’t have off nights but when they do, there are few options to pick up the slack. Fischer can’t be depended on…and the glaring fact in all of this is that Rose does not develop his young guys for prime time. Neilson and Kuafusi are very capable bodies, Nixon is a legend in Orem basketball, as is Toolson from Az. Where were the minutes for these guys early in the year when we were beating down teams by 20 or 30 points. Now we are in the thick of WCC play and we are getting 2 lousy points from inside play.

BYU is no better off then we were last year and the prospects fro next year when we lose Haws and Winder looks even bleaker.

Many of us predicted this early in the season and spoke of the concerns we had. I’ll bet it is something that came up after every game… that BYU needed to get some production inside in order to be viable and legitimate at the end of the season. I had more hope last season than I do right now.

When on earth is Austin going to play again?

Kaufusi is getting there but behind where he could have been. Nielson looks like a bust because of his lack of playing time and Worthington hasn’t made one lick of improvement. Watching him trying to defend Davis last night was comical.

Our concerns are coming to pass…

Toolson has had some good shooting games. But, Nixon can’t hit from the outside at all. He’s not even close. Last night, except for Haws, everyone was off from the 3 point line. Course, some of the 3’s were Jimmer type 3 attempts from 30 feet. Insane!

Fischer is another Tavenari or Cummard type who disappear in big games or league games. I hope we see a better effort Saturday…

Inside, meaning the bigs. Because, we had lots of layup attempts that didn’t make it in the basket. We shot 38%. 23% from the 3 line. Pepp didn’t shoot all that well either. But, they won it from the free throw line. They shot a lot more. We lost it because of missed layups. 6 more layups made and we shoot 47% and win.

The missed layup issue is a direct result of the “lack of bigs” issue. It is simply more difficult for a shorter player, who typically plays away from the basket, to convert a layup against bigger inside defenders than it is for a taller player to do the same thing. Yes, KC is great, Winder is pretty good at it and Haws is also effective but when Halford, Fischer or some of the other guards go to the basket it is an adventure.

I promise you, if BYU had a decent inside threat or game at this point, things would be different.

So Jim… that begs the question… “Why don’t we have any big’s ?”

I know Mika is on his mission, but why has Rose not addressed the issue of big men for BYU?

to me (which I am no authority on) it looks like Rose likes to stock pile players who play the guard or small forward positions.

If someone can help explain this me, I would appreciate it.

We have quite a lot of big men Floyd. Austin is injured as well as Aytes. Andreas just isn’t ready for big time ball games. Although, I’d like to see Rose put him in and see what he can do on the offensive side of things. Maybe play with Kaufusi at the same time.

What I don’t understand is why practice isn’t transitioning into the game better with these 3 bigs that are playing. When was the last time you saw an up and under move? Like, never! Fake a hook shot and go under!!!

I’m not sure what the reason is. Austin is injured, still 2 weeks away apparently, and I’m wondering if he will see the floor at all. The other 2 are freshman and Rose didn’t get them the minutes they needed early so they look lost a lot of the time. The biggest problem I see is that the philosophy is to run and shoot as fast as they can in an effort to negate the affect of opponents defense or the impact of their own big guys to the benefit of the guards. If Worthington was more effective it would be a huge help but like Scott says, there is ZERO production offensively from the bigs. What about an up and under or some kind of post up in an offensive set?

The team is guard and 3 point shooting driven with some fast breaking too, well that and get Haws as many shots as possible even when it doesn’t go with the offensive flow.

When it works it is great, when it doesn’t there is nothing to go to…

I guess I need a definition of “Big” because most of the people mentioned are somewhere between 6-8 and 6-9 right?

To me, “Big” means people like Greg Kite type body…

Not a lot of LDS kids fit that profile, and if they do, they don’t seem to want to play at BYU.

Not any more. It is circumstantial or is being in the rec-league WCC a factor? How about the fact that Coach Rose doesn’t know how to keep his team in a killer mode of motivation?

I guess I need a definition of “Big” because most of the people mentioned are somewhere between 6-8 and 6-9 right?


On this team big would be anybody over 6’6" or so IMO. There aren’t too many that fit that bill. As far as Greg Kite types, I don’t know if BYU has a had a “big” like that in awhile. Actually size isn’t so much the issue as having a player that can defend and/or score in the low post. Most of the teams in the wcc have players that can do that. For some reason, BYU does not and they don’t seem able to get somebody to do that. Kaufusi has potential and so does Nielson but they need more time.

As long as they have the size of your head, they are big :wink:

Come on, The bigs we have are 6’10 and taller. Honestly Floyd…

Considering how many 7 footers are playing these day… and we can not get them??? Honestly Scott…

This team underwent a seismic shift when Aytes and Austin went down. With them our entire concept would be different. I give Rose HUGE credit for adjusting the way he has. Imagine even Gonzaga if Wiltjer and Big Poland went down. They would lose some games, just like we have. I think a baseline for a coaching job well done is to beat everyone you should beat. We have 5 losses, all to good teams, and all were within a possession in the last two minutes. We are on pace to finish 23-8 with basically an all-guard team. Says a lot about Coach Rose’s ability that we would expect more.

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Fischer had his best game last night as a Cougar. He is finally hitting shots in games that count.

KC is just on another planet

Fischer was money. As was Halford. You are right about KC, and Haws’ 2nd half was among his best at BYU. In the 2nd half I think he was 6-7/8-8 after going only 2-9 from the field in the first half. Huge credit to him for keeping his composure and playing through massive and regular credit.

Is the lack of bigs play a coaching problem?

Yes, yes and yes.

I think that Rose can’t land the great bigs because he runs a high octane system that relies on speed and for that you need guards and bigs (Mika would be the exception) just go elsewhere) Kuafusi will evolve to be great but he has not had time off the mish to build up and to learn how to play big.