Starting roster, Mid Season roster

Basketball
1

Starters

1 Barcello, Point or 2 guard. Everything revolves around this Sr.
2 Lucas, Point.
3 Knight 3 or 4, Scoring machine
4 Lohner, 3 or 4, this kid is a star. The only reason why he won’t be a 20-10 machine is there is just too much talent on BYU and so many stats to pass around.
5 Harward 5, somehow it just doesn’t feel right, enforcer but too slow and BYU has so many gazelles

Contenders
1 Baxter, 4 or 5 spot. dude is a starter just needs to be healthy.
2 Knell, may be the starter at the 2 or 3. He has earned it with his shooting and defense.
3 George, at the 3 or even 4, this kid is the dark horse…if he could just pick up the Pope doctrine of team and pass to get a better shot, he would be a starter.
4 Johnson, Mr. consistent and never afraid to take that shot. It this guy hit the weights and gained 20 lbs, I would make him the instant starter at the 3.
5 Hunter Erickson, Point or 2 guard, One of my favs, scoring machine and if he were to ever start, he would never look back.
This team’s talent is top 25 all day, just how will they gel.

What will the rotation look like?

"BYU has 16 guys on the roster, and odds are BYU probably won’t want to go more than 10 deep. You can lock in Barcello, Lucas and Lohner as three of the starters, and then George/Knight and Baxter/Harward in the other two spots. Those 7 will get a lot of minutes, regardless of who starts.

I think Knell has to be the eighth guy with his shooting, and then you round out the rotation with Spencer Johnson if you go 9 guys deep. If BYU want to go deeper, I think Hunter Erickson will make a jump and you add Fousseyni Traore as an undersized big. Traore is more developed at this point than Atiki, so I think he will see more minutes early. I have a hard time seeing Trey Stewart, Nate Hansen, Jeremy DowDell and Casey Brown cracking the rotation.

Baxter and Harward are the only two experienced bigs, so I think BYU will go smaller at times this year to get the best players on the court. I think Lohner, George and Knight will all play the 4 in stretches this year in order to get guys like Knell and Johnson on the court more, and I think Lohner will play the 5 in spurts. He played the 5 at times at the end of the season and he has the rebounding ability at 6-foot-8 to play the 5 in a small ball lineup. This won’t be the starting lineup, but a five of Barcello, Lucas, George, Knight and Lohner could be an elite offensive lineup with shooters all over the floor and just enough size to hold its own defensively.

All things considered, Mark Pope and the staff have a deep lineup to play with and an offseason ahead to tinker around and figure out the best guys to put on the floor."
(from Vanquish the foe)

What say you

2

salivating…though johnson and knell fit right into the small ball lineup for slightly different mix of top notch talent.

Hunter Erickson with Lohner on the court would be pretty cool too…

3

yep, If Baxter is healthy
Brcello, Lucas, Knight, Lohner and Baxter- hai jai jai.

4

I like Harward–he can actually score at the rim with his drop step by simply overpowering his guy. He picked up a lot of offensive fouls last year because he took too long backing his guy down and if you spend too long down there with the ball there are too many officials’ eyes focusing on you. Pope will teach him to catch, turn and score or pass it back out. But he’s the only guy on the roster with the sheer size and bulk to push bigs around in the paint. Plus he’s just plain fun to watch.

Baxter is an absolute athletic freak. Like you say, if he can only stay healthy…BYU rarely gets guys with his pure length and explosiveness. Great attitude as well. Real team guy.

I also can’t wait to see Erickson. I’m on the Erickson hype train. Another kid with big-time hops and quickness. He will have to play himself into minutes but I believe. Go to 1:30 on the highlight video below and think of how many BYU guards can do that in traffic: Hunter Ericson Has Game & Bounce!! Highlights From Tarkanian Classic - YouTube

5

Hunter has been dominating the summer pick up games with local NBA players and studs from area D1 schools. I have been chatting him up since he signed. His day will come.
BYU basketball: Why Hunter Erickson is digging Utah’s Powder League - Deseret News

I thought he would be running the team this year but Barcello came back and now you have Lucas. Sure hope we see him getting good minutes so he is ready when the green light is on.

6

Pope does love his experienced transfers…and what’s to argue with his success.
My concern is the bringing along young talent…Lohner got his chance. But I wonder if Bax hadn’t been injured how much of a chance he would have gotten. The immediate transfers after the season ended is now a common occurance across Division 1. But this is the first year that Pope has had major pieces of the expected rotation leave. The replacements he brought in were top notch, but still I remain concerned about the ability to bring in younger players if you have to be a Lohner quality to get development minutes in legit games.

7

The transfer portal, otherwise known as “free market recruiting,” will make it really hard for programs to have continuity. You bring in a great recruit who has potential but isn’t ready to play. The next day you see a guy entered the portal and he IS ready to play, so you sign him. He makes your team better. But the freshman recruit feels the burn, and HE enters the portal. It’s like musical chairs meets Russian roulette for coaches.

8

Kansas coach Bill Self on BYU basketball:

“BYU to me is, a sleeping giant is probably not the right word because it makes it sound like they haven’t done it yet. But they’re a team that could be really good for a long time. Certainly as long as Mark’s there.”

“As long as Mark’s there.” My interpretation: “yeah, they were good before Mark got there, but they can be really good as long as he’s there, and probably drop off if he were to leave.” The elite in NCAA hoops know that Mark Pope belongs.

9

Interesting, Well, You were dead right in your valuation of Pope. I will be going to practices this coming week if I can. Stay tuned.

Agreed but… Last year we had too many bodies competing for playing time. then we lost Baxter and Lowell before the season started. If anyone remembers, I had both guys as starters and now they are gone. Lohner gets his start and never lets go, Lee gets the start but i thought he would end up behind Harward and Baxter, so Pope may have had 12 guys that could vie for playing time and ends up with 10. In the end, Pope loses Lee, Harding and Wade and brings in Lucas, Knight and Atiki and Traore. Quite an upgrade, I would say.

Secondly, Pope has always boasted that to have the best locker room in America. He is the master at getting teammates to bond and have harmony on BYU teams. That goes a long way to keeping guys out of the transfer portal.

lastly, life never goes as planned. Injuries, inflated egos and sometimes a transfer is just better for the athlete happens.

I agree with Self that as long as Pope is at BYU, the program will grow… and now that we are joining the Big 12, we can finally pay him enough to keep him here a while longer.

10

Although Big12 conference play will be very scary :slight_smile: :crazy_face:

11

As my fishing buddy, retired NBA coach, always reminds me, “Speed kills, BYU needs more speed”. This ain’t the Mtn or the WCC anymore.

We are getting better with these new transfers but baptism into the Big 12 will cause BYU to recruit another level player just to compete day to day in this elite league.

12

Great quote today from Pope:

"The magic of coaching is getting all of these personalities to mesh, all of these dreams to fit together and all of these agendas to overlap.”

I think getting “all of these dreams to fit together” really is the secret sauce. Every one of these guys dreams of being a star. Can Pope get them to rise up and be the star when at the proper moment and accept not being the star in other circumstances? Tough gig but Pope is the guy to make it happen.

For me, the ultimate beauty of basketball is when a team has several guys capable of being the star in any moment, yet their collective unselfishness is so ingrained that they never TRY to be the star–it just happens.

13

Listening to what I could of the media day preview yesterday, I heard Te’Jon Lucas affirm, I think, that he chose Pope over Self. So Pope has beaten Calipari and Self, to HoF coaches and the most successful of this era, for recruits in the last two years…good things in store.

14

I’m absolutely loving the talk coming from Big12 media access this week…this from a B12 player:

“you’re playing against NBA players every night. The level of competition is unmatched, night-in and night-out. … You have no easy games, no off days.”

Imagine–future NBA players almost every night. In the VAST majority of BYU’s games the last 10 years, we have played against NO NBA players. Talk about a massive change in competition. Monumental challenge for BYU hoops, but if anyone can do it, it’s Mark Pope. This should give Pope a big boost in recruiting the top LDS talent who in the past have gone to P5 schools. If Pope can recruit like he has playing 10 games a year in high school gyms, just think what he can do playing in these INCREDIBLE Big12 venues night after night. Pope has to be just poppin’ with excitement these days.

15

One more thought:

Since we joined the WCC, except for Gonzaga and Dellavadova, I can’t think of a single WCC player playing in the NBA. In 10 years. This is a MONUMENTAL increase in competition and Pope better start recruiting elite players. I honestly truly believe Pope will rise to the task. He has to be positively shaking with enthusiasm about this, and recruits will feel it. But there is no way to exaggerate the difference in competition from almost every player on the floor on every team. I bet that outside of BYU and GU there are maybe a couple guys in the entire WCC who could even start in the Big12.

16

And don’t forget we should be looking forward to the big 12 referees compared to western States referees.
Yes I believe Mark pope will do fine with recording.
And again no more high school Gym

17
  1. Agreed
  2. Agreed
  3. AGREED

Thanks for making it so easy to respond!!

18

Jazz Convert Malik Fitts to Two-Way Contract | Utah Jazz (nba.com)

If he sticks with the Jazz, that is a tall order but as of today, he is a Jazz man. Agreed. The change as both you and dew point out is night and day. No more rec. league. No more HS gyms or anything less then 10,000 crazy fans to every single game.

Pope had already turned the corner when he landed Haarms but I see a higher quality of recruit coming to BYU. (still waiting to see if Johnson’s brother (7 footer that signed with Or after his mission.

Buckle up

19

My buddy in the program tells me that Te’Jon is a big time player and that Seneca is special. In Pope We Trust.

20

I was looking at stats. college lifetime stats
Lucas as you have pointed out is a assist machine. In his sophomore year or Covid junior year, he hit .327% of his threes then he digressed the next year to the mid 20%s. I think he is the point guard add an improvement on BA just on size alone.

Seneca I think went one for six on his threes last year… For some reason I am not sold on him being a starter. It feels to me that he is probably going to be the first or second guy coming in. I DK call me crazy.

My five:
Barcelo
Lucas
Knell or George or Baxter or Johnson
Lohner
Harvard

Erickson
Seneca

I just know guard play is Uber important in pope’s Scheme. I also know that we have a lot of talent to choose from