In this game tonight, there were good things and bad thing. But, we won. Now, Gonzaga. #1 team in the country…I say we will play our best game and win.
LOL. . . .
Oh ye of little faith 
Okay - we won, but that aside (because it was more a matter of LMU losing than us winning) I didn’t really think we looked a whole lot better in this win than we did in the loss two days earlier. Possibly a bit better defense, but the offense was again out of control and hard to watch. 23 turnovers - what more needs to be said. How many awful and careless passes can one team make in a game? How often can we dribble with heads down into the teeth of the defense to have the ball stripped? How many floating cross court passes can we throw that are easily intercepted? How many times can we fumble the ball away? And even though the coaches surely care, they do nothing about it - like sitting some guys for long stretches if they are going to play like this.
I agree this is a young team, but if they are going to get better, Rose needs to hand out some tough love like the Hoosier movie coach. Either they play the game right or go sit at the end of the bench. I really believe if Rose wants to see these guys improve he needs to do what that coach did - break them down, get rid of the lousy habits (even if it means a few extra losses) and then build them up correctly. It’s likely too late for this year, but practice has to be turned into an exercise in fundamentals - crisp and accurate passing, lateral movement, sharing the ball, playing team D, etc. Rose needs to get “street ball” out of these guys or they’ll never amount to much of anything on the court.
If Gonzaga brings anything close to its “A” game on Thursday, this BYU team may end of with a serious reality check. Winning would take a miracle and a complete attitude change from the team (I’m not holding my breath), staying close would be some type of victory (I guess), but if they play like tonight, embarrassing things could happen.
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I sat 6 rows up in the corner and this is my report…In order for this team to get past our history of winning in the Marriott and losing on the road, BYU has to fix the following:
Mika is a terrible passer (3 TOs in a row), that needs to improve. Hard to criticize him because he is so clutch for BYU but he needs to work on it.
Childs is a auto-foul when defending outside, uses his hands rather than feet.
Haws and Bryant both are extremely careless with the ball, 6 and 3 TOs but what’s more is how they do it. Leads to easy buckets on the other side. 23 TOs for the game would be a blow out wins for LMU on the road but LMU just missed too many shots at our place.
Haws hits 2 threes and I poke my buddy and say, “Here comes the heat check” and sure enough, the “Crazy” Haws comes alive and shots the next 3 bricks.
0 discipline on this team. This has little to do with maturity and everything to do with poor coaching
LMU jacks up 28 3s, At home they beat us. BYU left them wide open all night but they just missed. That is the single reason why we lose on the road. WE LEAVE THEM OPEN.
56% on 44 FTs and a ton of missed front ends, This team will not win many road games going forward.
Layups and free throws win games for us that we have lost. Everything else you mentioned wouldn’t make a difference. We would be 22 and 2 by now.
Now, to your points. I too was shaking my head with the dribbling too much, head down, lazy passes and questionable shots. I still dislike our offense we run. It breeds the type of mistakes we make. I’m not sure what we run. Sometimes it looks like a zone offense against a man. But it creates all those errors. Yes, sometimes the passes are questionable. Sometimes they have no choice because it’s part of the offense.
I have changed my opinion on some of the reasons BYU loses. First, Child’s is a terrible outside defender and we can’t assign him to guard a 4 who can shoot 3’s like SCU. We have to put Shaw in the game when we face shooters at the 4. Next is Mika, who has to pass out of the offense when he has the ball and his potential shot will be difficult. He is a black hole. Lastly, I challenge all of you to freeze the TV when Mika has the ball in the block. Look at the spacing of our guards on the 3 pt line. They don’t have spacing and 2 of them are usually so close to each other they can be guarded by 1 defender and they are from 4 to 10 ft behind the 3 line and are not in shooting position. They are simply watching Mika work up a shot. Beo is the only one finding the right angles and putting himself in shooting position. Notice he was the only player who penetrated and kicked it back out last night? Lastly, Emery and Haws and Bryant will dribble penetrate but will not kick the ball back out to open shooters. They are simply not looking for the open teammates. These are all correctàble errors and Rose has to figure it out. Just rewatch the first 7 min of SCU game and you will all be surprised by Childs. I was shocked I have missed that part of his game.
I happen to agree with all of you on what needs to be done and what needs to change, including the grasshopper, but I laugh when he says
Then he follows that up with -
Anyhow, the thing that is most perplexing about the situation is this - If it is so obvious to the rest of us and the consensus is generally there, why does it appear that there is little to no effort on the part of coaches and players to change or fix it? Rose is a VETERAN coach and while the team is young, that is no excuse for not doing some of the basic things that ALL teams with talent (and many teams with inferior talent) can or will do to get better.
I don’t see this team getting better at this point in the season. They generally win games at home (although not blowouts so much anymore) and lose away games they should easily win. Even in the wins they keep making the dumb errors, don’t run a decent offense, etc. It is actually surprising they win some of these games, which only proves the point that the talent is there. Unfortunately we all know that this talent is UNDERPERFORMING and not showing much improvement.
What hope is there at this point? It is going to take a miracle to beat or even stay close against Gonzaga. I think an average game by the Zags will result in an easy win for them. They don’t even have to play that well to beat a very undisciplined, erratic and confused BYU, who should be better than they were at the start of the season.
It has nothing to do with faith on our part grasshopper…
Oh, yes the faithful have buried their team 
Yep, the offense is puzzling. What exactly are they running? We make a screen and then stand around. Then we get trapped and have to dribble way too much. All this creates making bad attempts at layups and free throw percentage goes down.
I don’t agree about Childs. He does get lost up top. But plays well down low on defense and offense.
Mika’s shooting percentage is excellent. Can’t fault him shooting the ball.
I agree with just about everything said. The comment that really struck me is “why can we all see it and apparently the coaches can’t” (paraphrase). It made we wonder about something Rose said before the actually games started. It was something along the lines of “we’re young but I’m pleased with what I see and we’re going to surprise some people”. Can’t remember the context.
It made me wonder that maybe our coaches really don’t see it? Maybe they watch practice and don’t realize that the offensive plan really stinks because it works against the bad defense it’s being practiced against - our players. Maybe the vaunted 1-3-1 defense works in practice for the same reason. Hence, the coaches just think it’s poor execution in game time when in reality, the designs are a great part of our on court game time failures?
Could it be that much our bad passing, our dribbling into trouble, of off balance shots, our selfish play, etc. is as much a result of schemes put together for our offense and defense by the coaches as by poor execution by the players? I’m not saying it is the cause of all bad play but it places our players in situation that lead to bad decisions and play making. For example, how many times have we seen the low guy on the 1-3-1 defense come running from across the court to vainly try to cover a deep corner shot after the wing defender has been sucked in by penetration? It’s crazy! Like someone else said, we have guys literally on top of each other on offense, without any thought to spacing, watching someone else with the ball? Just a thought, but if the coaches can’t see the obvious, maybe it’s because to them it’s all just bad execution and has nothing to do with the lousy schemes, so why change?
Franklin said: Could it be that much our bad passing, our dribbling into trouble, of off balance shots, our selfish play, etc. is as much a result of schemes put together for our offense and defense by the coaches as by poor execution by the players?
Me: I’ve been posting this for a long time now. Glad someone else has caught on. These kids play hard and want to win every game. They get trapped because the offense is a stagnant one. I have to agree with some that they also make high school mistakes they used to get away with. But all colleges have the elite of the high school ranks and it’s silly to dribble every time between two players.
As far as the 1-3-1, it seems to work better at home. And used sparingly. Their man defense is week except for a couple of players because of improper sliding technique and physically weak. Same on offense. And I think this is what Rose is referring to. That these things will improved will make this team dominate next year. We scored 85 points with 23 turnovers. This is what he’s talking about. Our Cougar nation is just impatient.
two out of the last three, three out of the last five by 30 rounding it out is hardly not so much any more…
gotta love the blue goggles…will everyone be wearing them after Thursday?
My concern for this team is that March is here. Usually by March Rose has the team firing on all cylinders. Right now it seems like he’s only getting some of the cylinders firing some of the time…youth probably…still a concern.
Beo seems to be picking it up as the season goes on…wouldn’t be surprised to see him with more minutes than any of the big three guards next year…TJ, Emery, Bryant, Beo…who else will step it up?
Well, almost “all” cylinders. They NEVER win the wcc tournament and that takes place in March. They NEVER do enough to win the league… and that often is a case of winning games when it matters. That is something BYU is not very good at.
By the way, 2 of the last 3 wins at home were by 8 and 10 points. Honestly, all those blowout 30 pt. wins do is give the team a false sense of grandeur. They have 8 games left and I would not be surprised if they go 4-4 with losses to St. Mary’s at home, USF on the road and Gonzaga twice. They should beat Portland twice because they lost their best player for the season. Then they have Pepperdine on the road and San Diego at home, which should be easy wins as well. The conference losses so far haven’t been close games but the LMU away win was a gift.
Lastly, what was the comment about Beo picking it up? I didn’t see the game yesterday but against Santa Clara he played 3 minutes in an 8 point loss so the only thing he was picking up was towels and water bottles… 
Comment from grasshopper, not Harold.
And they scored 68 points with 18 turnovers in a loss to Santa Clara two days before that. A week ago BYU scored 62 points with 14 turnovers. What, exactly, is your point?
Should they try and commit more turnovers in an attempt to score more points? On average BYU commits more turnovers than their opponents do and that is a reflection of immaturity and lack of discipline, two characteristics that most teams don’t strive for.
Yeah I should have said February. It is the month that Rose has his best record. March is much more mundane.
It is going to take more than BYU’s best game. Gonzaga will have to play one of their worst games as well. If that combo happens then I think there is a good chance. The positive spin on it is that after 20 or so games, neither team has done either one of those things. Maybe this time will be the first…
BYU could shoot lights out and win…but then Gonzaga plays defense so we will get thumped and get to see plenty of hero ball.
If we play our best game of the year, it won’t matter what Gonzaga does.
It means we have nothing but upside. The future is bright! Hugely bright!
I watched on TV; I was glad we won, yet I was sorely tempted to fast forward through it because it was painful to watch.
I am to the point where I believe any shot by Mika is the best shot we can get in the half court. Yes he commits some turnovers when he gets doubled, but let’s face it–he is our entire team in the half court and has been for awhile…if he leaves after this year I don’t know how we even win half our games next season…I think he’s that good…
I agree with what posters have said about Childs’ perimeter D. I have no idea why he keeps fouling guys out there…
Haws has 14 turnovers in the past 3 games. He is looks completely immature and shows no concern for ball control.
I hate it when Blaine Fowler says “HEAT CHECK!” like it’s a good thing. Heat Check means a selfish, poor shot that should count as a turnover. There is nothing OK about a selfish shot. Fowler needs to stop doing that because I think it makes him sound like an idiot, which he most definitely IS NOT.
I am a huge TJ Haws fan. I think it takes tremendous skill for a freshman to score the way he does. He is a special athlete with mad offensive skills. But I am the first to admit that it is incredibly painful to watch him grow up on the court like this.
Bryant had A TON of turnovers at Elon; someone commented that he had a high usage % there, but still he was a turnover machine. That said, he can take the ball to the hole and score in traffic, something in very short supply at BYU, so we need him and need him bad.
I can’t understand why Coach Rose tolerates all the lackadaisical play and careless turnovers. Half of them seem to be basketball IQ stuff…like, “everyone knows you shouldn’t do that, so why did you just do it?”