Well, the top 25 ranking did not happen this week, BYU sits just on the edge @26. A game like this is every bit the season maker that the SF game was. Having said that, BYU is BUILT to play a team like SCU.
SCU’s production comes from 6’6 Williams and 6’7 Justice. They are not only the VOLUME shooters on the team but make 40% and 45% from 3 respectively. Not having seen these guys play, if I were Coach Herb Sendek, I would run Pic an Roll all day long with these two. Most teams don’t have 2 guards that could that kind of length. BYU has Lohner, Knight and George that can. I also saw a lot of Lucas covering Portland’s uber athlete, Austin ., who plays longer then 6’4.
SCU is a VERY good long-distance team, making 37%. SDU is not let them get many looks so SCU went inside to punish them. This will be a dog fight as BYU is very good at defending the 3 (Something Pope is very proud of as BYU NEVER was any good at defending for 3 the last 40 or so years)
SDU lost that game last night because 6’10 Brown fouled out. SCU then took it to SDU with 6’9 Vrankic inside. SCU has two solid 6’10 inside players, Vrankic, is a scorer, Braun is a garbage cleaner. Foos has yet to get into foul trouble and Atiki is progressing just fine. I really like our match ups in this one.
Coach Sendek uses 7 guys and his starters avg. 35 minutes per contest. BYU uses 9, we average 28 minutes. We are a team with a bench that does not miss a beat. consider that our last 2 games, Barcello has not come close to his averages and yet we won both easily.
SCU scored 20 points on SDU turnovers, yet they had to go into overtime, SDU is that good. If their center, Brown had not fouled out, they win. BYU has worked hard on turnovers. Two things I see is that George and Lohner, our worst passers are making shots rather than hesitating and rushing a poor pass.
Prediction: Vegas has BYU by <2, ESPN has SCU by 1. This will be tight from start to finish with BYU Edging out SCU 74-71.
