Watching the scrimmage tonight-my take away-more athleticism than BYU has had in a while. Most improvement-George. Just a lot of good new players that will help out the Cougars
I did not see the scrimmage, and I’m drooling if you are saying that George could be most improved!
A couple thoughts about personnel:
When my daughter was the academic mentor for the BB team, I got to know Tyler Haws pretty well. I never could figure how they listed him at 6’5" unless they counted his nicely coiffed hair. I saw Gedeon George in the offices a couple weeks ago, and he looks BIGGER than his listed 6’6". Huge hands. Long arms. Every bit of 6’6". Athleticism off the charts. Seneca is just as long and way more polished as a player. Don’t even start me about Lohner. Ok, start me up…Lohner is all that with a bag of chips athletic. BYU has NEVER had THREE wings as big and athletic as these guys. I have not seen Seneca up close, but Lohner and George are also RIPPED. The days of Bean Poles at BYU are gone, and Pope knows those scrawny guys won’t be able to compete in the Big12 anyway. My heart is palpitating at the thought of how Pope will use Lohner and Gideon and Seneca. Pope will condition minutes on playing within his system, but if they can learn and execute the offense, opponents should look out because that shadow over them is Lohner or Seneca or Gideon getting ready to throw down and posterize them.
That said, my heart just about stopped–again–watching Te’jon’s highlights. WHAT A GAMER!!! He oozes leadership…even on the highlights you can see how his teammates feed off of his confidence… I liked BA, but Te’jon is a whole different level on D, and a legitimate “I want the last shot” kinda guy…
Is this a Te’jon Lucas highlight reel? Or did somebody photoshop in Alex Barcello’s game into Te’jon’s body? Same size, same handle, same ability to use different release points to score over bigger guys, same absolutely wicked crossover dribble before fadeaway jumper…and this doesn’t even highlight his passing. He is a WONDERFUL passer and the guys will LOVE playing with him.
Well you know how George looked kind of tentative last year and didn’t really mesh into the team aspect of the offense. Well he looks really confident and like he is a part of group this year and his skill set is looking good. We will see if that holds together the next two games
Gideon was one of my favorite players last year. He is so raw…he has NBA athleticism, which is historically a rare thing at BYU (not for long–thank you Mark Pope). His teammates LOVE him. He clearly struggled with fluidity in the offense and that got him plenty of pine time. But there were flashes of brilliance…in our first game vs GU, Barcello, Harding and Averette all started and combined for 73 minutes played, 12 points and 7 rb. In the same game Gideon played 20 minutes and had 11 points and 5 boards. On that night, his raw ability shone. In fact, in our 3 losses to GU Gideon shot 11-21 with 12 boards in 64 minutes total. Those were not his biggest games statistically, but those were 3 games in which our guards were generally OVERWHELMED by NBA talent, but Gideon absolutely held his own–in all 3 games. His upside is tremendous. He is listed as a senior this year, but I think he may be a junior again with a free covid year. I’ll check into that…
If you are able, watch their exhibition game tomorrow at 6 PDT against Colorado Christian. I believe you might see more athleticism than you have ever seen on a BYU basketball team-knock on wood
I’ll be watching!
not sure why but youtube video link says it is unavailable even though it is visible
Kaufusi interviews Gavin Baxter give a whole different view of bball athleticism.
Interesting comparison between football and bball, in a number of other differences other than just athleticism.
Observations from the game tonight.
Barcelllo is even better this year
Trevon Lucas is every bit as good as projected. He is a Passing machine and pretty darn effective down low under the basket
Treiore is a beast and iwill be hard to keep him off the floor
Byu is still a very poor free-throw shooting team
Not sure what happened to Harward. I guess he passed out out there
Gideon George has a freaking beast out there
T-Rank Player Stats - Customizable College Basketball Tempo Free Stats - T-Rank (barttorvik.com)
Pay attention to the top 100 quality games bar. In every year, Lucas has played better when he plays tough games. he is shooting over .425-.500 % from 3.
Gideon is always the or close to the most athletic player on the floor. I’m hoping Pope will let him play aggressively on O. Gideon can take anyone his size or even bigger and score at the rim, and he has good touch around the basket and also uses the backboard really well when he hangs in the air just a little longer than his defender.
Traore looks great. Could be a nice surprise.
Te’jon exactly as advertised.
That was the most boring BYU offense ever, but I think Pope did it on purpose just to get guys out on the floor. My guess is we are not subjected to an entire season of watching BYU run a 25 second weave every possession all year.
The FT shooting was simply embarrassing.
This year will be very different. In the past, we had 3-4 easy games and fooled around with the lineup.
This year, Sr. heavy Clev, then SDSU and they have all their scoring back, then Oregon, can’t remember a tougher 1st three games. Pope will have to play his starters and have the rotation fairly tuned in to play a very tough schedule. Pope will use a 10 man rotation:
Bacello
Lucas
Lohner
George
Harward- Baxter
Seneca, Knell and Johnson off the bench
Traore will be used a lot with Baxter’s minutes limited to 3 min per stint.
No, we won’t be seeing much of Atiki (miles from knowing what to do out there) or Erickson (has to be a defensive issue).
We need one more guy who penetrates to kick, Lohner and George seem to be mediocre passers. Could it be Johnson, then you get into speed issues IDK.
One other guy really impressed me, like Whoa…Fr. G Trey Stewart.out of Am Fork Utah.
I too was impressed with how smooth Trey Stewart was out there…if I recall, when Stewart signed, Pope raved about his athleticism and said “he jumps out of the gym and will be dunking on you” or something like that. What impressed me though was how smooth he looked handling the ball. I doubt we see him or Erickson the first few games. Nice to have two ballhandlers like that ready to step up for the next few years since we will have two AWESOME PGs this year but both AB and Te’jon will be gone after this season.
Traore and Atiki are going to have to play. They have huge upside. George looked very good against CCU. See if he can do the same with Cleveland St. If Harward is out, I’d start Baxter at the 5. He’s gained a lot of muscle size. Lohner at 4, George at 3 and the two seniors at the 1 and 2.