St Marys will be absolutely tough

We are all too familiar with their center Jock Landale and their guards, Naar and Rohan and their precision plays but BYU has suffered mostly by not having an answer for Hermanson. He just goes and sits in the corner and does nothing but wait. Once we have forgotten about him and SMC’s guards penetrate (because we are always soft, we will always be soft in the middle because we are BYU) they kick it out to #24 and he jacks up a 3 or heads to the bucket once we go air born.

BYU is much better at the Pic and Roll and Kaufusi has gotten to the point that Rose trusts him and Rose will use him on Landale so we will see just how well we play these guys. Fouls will play a big roll in our game…no predictions from me this time, SMC is just too fundamentally sound…Meanwhile Gonzaga looks to have some issues leftover from our trouncing at the Kennel, they were tied at the half against lowly PU.

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This game might work with Kaufusi early and often.
Eli having a big game would also make a big difference.
Even Emery not doing his normal abysmal against the Gaels would help. Just something close to his average would be a step in the right direction.

Thanks CB for the analysis on St Marys. I didn’t see how BYU could beat Gonzaga but they surprised me. I would be even more surprised if BYU were able to knock-off St Marys. St Marys is just too patient and fundamentally sound, as CB said, to beat themselves. The only way I see BYU winning is if we come out hot and build a nice lead early on and take St Marys out of their game. Frankly, I think BYU should try to beat St Marys at their own game. Build a lead and then be patient and deliberate with each possession like they were at the end of the Gonzaga game. BYU isn’t very deep so slowing down the pace will keep the starters fresh and help avoid foul issues. BYU can’t afford unforced turnovers and back-to-back bad possessions. You know that St Marys just doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes and they will slowly mount a rally that BYU can’t answer.

I give BYU about a 30% chance of winning this game. As I see it, BYU has done enough to play in the NIT but haven’t earned a NCAA bid. Yes, they could still get the automatic bid if they win out. But, its unlikely this year. BYU shouldn’t feel any pressure. They should just go out and play loose.

The keys to this game are:

  1. No lazy or risky passes
  2. Stay in front of your man
  3. All guards must make their shots
  4. Mika and Childs must play team ball
  5. Bench has to produce something.

It’s unfortunate that Davis and Rose both went down. BYU went from a team that early in the year looked fairly deep and talented, but inexperienced to one that has become thin, talented, and still mostly inexperienced. Losing two of your top 7 players will kill the depth of most teams. All you really need is a 7-8 man rotation with some flexibility as to where you play certain people. If you have a dependable 9 man rotation and can keep all of them happy you will be formidable. When you go down to 5 very solid starters and several marginal subs you have depth issues. Kaufusi is just looking like a basketball player again. Prior to the Gonzaga game it didn’t look like he was going to produce anything at all this year and should just forget basketball and concentrate on football… At least now there is a solid backup for the two big men who won’t hurt the team defensively and can rebound. Shaw is a good rebounder but contributes almost nothing on offense and is a little small to guard big post players. Guinn plays good defense but contributes nothing offensively. Beo plays ok defense and a solid floor game but doesn’t score. Apparently Rose doesn’t trust the rest of the bench. It appears Aytes can score a little but can’t guard taller post men or smaller quicker ones and for some reason Rose doesn’t seem to trust Dastrup yet. I wonder what the story is there. He is a big body with a nice shooting touch and appears to be fundamentally sound. I don’t get why he sits and Shaw plays.

I don’t attribute Dastrup’s lack of playing time to the alleged “BYU culture”. I think it is something else. I would have thought by this time of the year he would be in some kind of post-mission basketball condition and would be contributing somewhat in accordance to his reputation as a recruit. If you watch him on the bench he seems to be a little too loose and maybe that bugs the coaches, who knows. Maybe there is a perception with the coaches that he doesn’t put out enough and maybe he is just still out of shape. I really thought he would contribute something this year. I hope BYU doesn’t lose him and have UVU pick him up. I wish there were some reliable source who could give me a clue as to why he hardly ever sees the floor except at garbage time.

He was recruited by Mark Pope (former BYU assistant) and I don’t see him going to UVU. I hope he doesn’t transfer.
Here one article from SLTrib Jay Drew. He gain 40 lbs during his mission and has lost 15 plbs from post mission. On this article below, I thought he would play more minutes at Portland and GU.

and what would we attribute to Nielsen, Chatman and others leaving the program? I guess that isn’t the culture either…

The bottom line, at this very moment, is that BYU has 5 players that contribute. They get absolutely nothing from anyone else. The notion that Guinn is some sort of defensive specialist or Beo plays turnover free or Kaufusi can back up Mika/Childs or Shaw brings anything besides taking up a space on the floor is without proof or merit. Don’t even get me started on Dastrup…

BYU beat Gonzaga because the Zags were long overdue for a loss, the Cougars are inside their heads (every team has a head case opponent) and the game didn’t matter much in the big picture of the ncaa tournament. It’s too bad BYU couldn’t have used the win to give them some credibility heading into the ncaa tourney selection. That ship sailed a long time ago with the bad losses throughout the season.

Coach Rose, as thawk said months ago, created this situation and now he has nothing he can rely on to help the team beyond his starting five. Honestly, I don’t think Davis and Rose would have done much either. The team was trending in the direction of those two seeing less and less time before (and regardless of) their injuries.

While I agree that losing Nielson, Chatman and others has hurt.
There are hundreds of players transferring every year from Division 1 schools. To blame the transfer culture on Rose when all Division 1 coaches have to deal with the situation is not what I would call a fair assessment. 2016 Division 1 Transfer basketball students 811 total; the year before even more. Given 350 or so schools. The average is more than two per school…per year.

The loss of Rose and Davis created much of the short bench problem this year. At least more immediately than the transfers.

Rose’s focus on winning the next game instead of next year’s game does create a motive for short sighted players to leave.
It also has created many years when near the end of the year a player has showed up near the end of the year with major minutes and making a major difference. Rose’s results in February, even this year, are better than any other month of the year…Somehow he manages to have players develop and improve…Certainly his talent has not been a top 10 current program though his record is…

For every transfer out of the program I can name one who came in. Transfers happen and I don’t think there is some insidious BYU culture that drives players away. In fact it attracts some in. If it was one sided with far more leaving than coming in there might be something to it. The transfer thing is more a college jock culture thing. Frankly I think that on the whole, over the years, BYU has probably come out a little ahead in the transfer business. For every Nielson, Toolson, or Chatman there is a Davis or Fisher or Carlino (yeah I know he left his senior year but BYU had him for 3 years and they got him from UCLA). Guys generally leave because they sense they will play more someplace else. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Chatman left over BYU’s law school policy. I see no reason to disbelieve him on that even if he did end up going to Boston College to pursue an MBA. Maybe that is the course his life was supposed to take and he will do more good there than he would have at BYU. From everything I can gather he seems like a very high quality young man. I am happy for him that he is playing, and playing very well, but BC isn’t going anywhere right now and probably nowhere in the foreseeable future. They are at the bottom of the ACC. I still think BYU has a very promising future with the starting 5 they could have for 1-2 more years. It would be nice to have Chatman. He would have played a lot and been a big asset off the bench but he left and it is working out better for him. Nielson never was going to play much and it was good for him that he left because he has played a lot, but other than the BYU game he hasn’t burned things up. He averages about 10 pts and 9 boards a game in a conference much weaker than the WCC. He is a decent player but I would take a healthy Davis over him. His BYU game was an aberration.

Losing both Davis and Rose was huge from the standpoint of depth. Both were starters at one time. Davis started all of last year and practically averaged a double/double. When he was healthy this year he was starting and he would still be getting 15-20 minutes a game if not more. I think coach Rose would love to have both of those guys right now. LJ was a very steadying influence and he didn’t turn the ball over as much as the younger guys. He played under control and when he was healthy he was good. His performance started going downhill when he got hurt. When Rose was playing well Bryant was hurt. It would be great to have had both of them healthy all year. Injuries happen but this year has been worse than normal.

In the case of Dastrup I was glad to read the Tribune article. He was overweight and out of shape due to the mission not any shortcomings of his own. He is working hard and has a good attitude if we are to believe the article. He has a bright future and I think he could still be a real good player. He was recruited by some of the top programs in the country.

I don’t like to be negative about the school and program. Neither are perfect but there is no insidious “culture” that runs kids off.

BYU had 15 players on their roster and it was packed to start the season. There are only so scholarships to go around and only so many minutes to go around for those on the roster and so kids will leave and go where they will play. I don’t blame them really. It isn’t fun sitting on the end of the bench and feeling ignored and unappreciated. It would be nice to have a few of them in lieu of the injuries but nobody can predict how those things will play out. I love the starting 5 right now. Every one of those guys are talented and the trick will be keeping them together 1-2 more years. It would nice to have 2 more nearly as good but they don’t right now so life goes on.

Even if Davis and Rose would have eventually been squeezed out of the starting position, both would have been a real good sub that what we currently have. 7 deep would have been nice. At least the bench would score some points! I think aside from Kaufusi, the bench has scored like 3 points in 3 games.

No need to exclude Kaufusi grasshopper, he hasn’t done anything offensively either. He made one key put back at a critical point against Gonzaga and everyone acts like it was the great awakening.

The thing I like best about the replies from Harold and Reed is that they are lengthy and do everything possible to discount or counter what I said. It really helped legitimize what I wrote. I agree with many of the things written, yet I stand by what I said about the culture. At the beginning of the season I believed it was detrimental to developing any kind of bench or depth on this team and I ended up being spot on. This is the number one reason the team has not really progressed… and the Gonzaga game is proving to be an abberation.

This comment is misleading… the record is misleading. If you put BYU in any of the major conferences, Rose’s record would be so much worse than it is. Whether or not BYU has top ten talent would have very little effect on that overall record, as evidenced by the results this season.

I don’t think it is as black and white as you are portraying it. My eyes and experience lead me to believe it is a problem. Even if the same 5 stick together for another couple years, the depth needed to make a legitimate run in the ncaa tournament won’t be there, so it isn’t going to happen.

St. Mary’s doubling up on BYU right now… A team with a positive basketball culture doesn’t lose like this… they just don’t.

St Marys is in the BYU players’ heads. Emery is 0-7, Haws is 2-6, Bryant is struggling, Mika isn’t hitting, Childs is missing on his jump hooks. This game was over at halftime. The one bright spot is the defensive play of Corbin on Landale. Time to start looking forward to the NIT!

Seriously Glenn? I just saw Landale make a dunk and a layup on that stellar defensive effort by Corbin…

Just another embarrassing effort by the Cougars. They look like a high school team out there again, something we have seen all too often this season.

Lastly, St. Mary’s is in the heads of the officials too. The calls will balance out in the second half, but St. Mary’s had 3 fouls in the first 19 minutes of the game. That is terrible officiating… disgusting frankly. No matter, St. Mary’s will get hammered by Gonzaga.

I can’t wait for the post game handshake between Rose and Bennett… :fearful:

There’s no culture problem. That’s a red herring for lack of depth and lack of progressing. You saw Dastrup out there tonight. He can hardly move he’s so over weight.

Even St. Mary’s crappy bench contributed tonight. There is no red herring. If there were no culture problem, the team wouldn’t be so up and down all the time. One week they are beating Gonzaga and the next they get blown out by St. Mary’s.

Where is the pride? the effort? the contributions from the entire team? Where is the encouragement for the bench players. You think if one of them actually started to play decent enough to earn more minutes that Bryant, Haws or Emery would be encouraging them and their development? No way and no how…

I know it is true and in the recesses of their minds, so do Harold and Reed. It may not be the way you understand or define “culture” but it is there… I’ve seen it, read about it and watched it all season long.

Nonsense. Is that what the nba scout said? No, but you seem to know more now? If Dastrup really thought he had an opportunity, why wouldn’t he be motivated to take advantage of it? He’s not that much overweight, that is your red herring. Why wasn’t the great Shaw out there? The depth problem was created by Rose and the basketball culture, plain and simple.

Wait and see what happens next season… I’ll bet there is no significant change.

Seriously Glenn? I just saw Landale make a dunk and a layup on that stellar defensive effort by Corbin…

Yeah, Corbin did well when he first came in the game. Landale was a little surprised at how strong he was and Corbin did get a block but I stopped watching the game after the first half so I don’t know how he did later. It sounds like Landale figured out how to play him.

I really don’t know what happened to our shooting. Like I said, St Marys must be in our players’ heads. It is going to be a long night when you let a team shoot 56% from the field and 52% from the 3pt line and 82% from the free throw line. How does Emery go 0-7 and go scoreless on the night? How does BYU shoot 32% from the field and 24% from 3pt line? Steve Cleveland was right about the refs. He said this crew officiates a lot of NCAA tourney games and they will let the players play. He was right! BYU shot only 11 fts. It is really amazing how BYU could be so outplayed defensively and offensively. I’d be curious to hear Rose’s assessment on what happened.

The difference with your analysis and Harold’s and others is yours is full of negative overtones. There’s isn’t. You think there is an attitude problem and there’s is purely skill and age level challenges. There is no “culture” problem other than the general LDS conditions like some are married with children and others have callings and responsibilities that most other colleges don’t have.
Dastrup may look okay in practice but he’s over weight and would get more playing time if he had progressed better. Kaufusi lost the weight and moves better on the court.
There will be changes in the off season that will help those bench players that did not improve. Guinn actually played much better and you could see that he was more comfortable on the floor. I think he has a lot of potential upside.

Disagree, but I am okay with you claiming my comments are full of negative overtones. Fortunately I am willing to call it like it is and hold them accountable. If I was the coach I wouldn’t be allowing the players to run the team. I would reprove at time with sharpness and then show forth an increased amount of love afterwards. It is an eternal principle and one that should have been used with this team a long time ago.

It is the reason they are taking so long to mature and gain the “experience” they need to be more successful. Sorry if it sounds negative but sometimes the truth hurts and it is a painful lesson.

There is no excuse in the world for the way the team “competed” last night. They simply didn’t… and it is a shame. Like I said, I don’t care about the loss as much as I am concerned with how they lost… it was terrible.

and yet…this too is a canard…there are hundreds of coaches, in fact most Div! coaches, who never coach in a major conference…in fact if you exclude the major conference coaches…There is only one coach, Mark Few, who has a better career record than Dave Rose…

Hundreds, thousands, of coaches who have worse records than Dave Rose certainly says something about the quality of his coaching…and the ‘culture’ you deride too frequently, (IMO) and those thousands of coaches also happen to include every single coach who has coached byu basketball men’s or women’s.

There you go…your famous mind reading…and simply as sure as black is not white…dead wrong…I do happen to know what I think/know better than you do…

It is an old anti-Mormon claim, centuries older than that actually, to claim you know something about those who you disagree with that they do not even know about themselves but that you do…wow…