By George, I think we’ve got it…now is the time to vent, why did it take so loooong for George to get traction as a ligit starter on a team where clearly he is top 3 or 4 and top 2 as an athlete?
I watched in the first 2 minutes and he had 3 rebounds, a steal, altered shot and 5 points. In the Gonzaga game several weeks back, he was the only cougar to penitrate their elite defense. Here are the starter stats from last night.
George)F 13r-19 points
. Lohner 6r-11p
. Haarms 6r-15
. Barcello 4a-12
Averette 5a-15 points
First time in years that all 5 starters were in double digits. That is unheard of. Granted, it was Portland but it was @ Portland.which is as big a mess as the politics of Portlandia just the same, BYU Clicked, I would be surprised if this is not the lineup for the Zags game and beyond. Just having George out there requires an opponent to shift one of their best defenders over. We will see what kind of chemistry we have going forward but to my knowledge, we give up some 3 % by starting George but gain monster inside pressure, rebounding and far better defense.
1 George makes all teammates better, as a true threat, teams have to put one of their best defenders on George, Barcello and Averette are immediate benefactors .
2 George is a rebounding machine. lohner’s numbers may dive a little but in the long run, they should improve in other areas.
3 Our turnovers should go down in time as Barcello and especially Averette are not alone in the driving game. George may have bad TO games, but our eye should be on playoffs and getting the best 5 on the court by dance time.
4. Those painful games of Pepperdine and Pacific should be an afterthought. This kid has so much upside, he just changes BYU’s entire offense. We will see now that teams can scheme for him but for a night, BYU looked lethel.
I tried to the watch game yesterday (On KJAZZ TV here in SLC) not sure who was broadcasting the game (a man and woman), but they were driving me crazy. Very little on the game, a lot of personal thoughts…
Yes, he fell hard, they took him aside and rewrapped it. He goes out and hits a 3 immediately.
Minor but worried it could be pretty sore for monday.
Two things that have worried me about BYU this year:
1 in advanced metrics, BYU is Poor at FT Rate. We just can’t get teams to put us on the line because we are poor drawing fouls. Averette has been a TO machine when he drives to the hoop. Barcello very reluctant to drive and those are our 2 point guards…Enter George and that metric should stabilize.
2 Defensive TO rate, our ability to cause turnovers. George should also help in that regard.
Outside of these two metrics, BYU is pretty good. I should mention that an athlete like George fills all kinds of stats in the all important BARTHAG-Power Rating or the ability of a team to beat a D1 team.
if they cannot look lethal against Portland they cannot look lethal against anyone.
Can they be killers against the Zags the way the team was at home last year?
No crowd…
No go to guys just guys with a higher level of average talent who’ve been improving every day…and Coach Pope is improving every day…five more years and the talent level will be higher off the bench and on the bench…and Pope will have his players and his schemes fully working instead of this year doing with what he could get…
BYU vs Zags break down for Monday…
How much difference will it be?
10 players all playing 15 plus minutes? Pope has been working on it…it is one edge that the Cougs have. Few has used fewer players this year…as per his usual.
George free up Haarms and Harward and Lohner and Lee?
AB and BA calm down and have their heads into this game instead of the way they played in the Kennel…Erickson and Wade I think will be better next year than ABBA this year…
Can the defence play well enough to allow an improving offence to have a chance?
The only tough game the Zags will likely have up to the sweet 16 or elite 8…time for the Cougs to show up even if the scoreboard isn’t their friend at the end…
About time. Even though we played the JV, George did things in the air that require a guy to jump just a little higher and hang just a little longer, than anyone else on the team except Lohner (and Baxter) are capable of doing. As you noted, the athleticism is there regardless of the opponent.
I loved it when the announcer said this of Lohner: “if this guy played 40 minutes he’d get 25 rebounds a game!” I enjoyed the announcers giving huge props to Lohner and George. I thought Ann Schatz was great. She was the first female nightly news sports anchor in Portland about 25 years ago. I think they had to do all the chit chat to keep
Things moving since the game was such a blowout.
anyone notice that Terry Porter was fired as the Portland coach. If I was the coach for Portland, I would fire myself…Get out of Portland, run to the nearest border. Ask for safe harbor. And Portland, you keep on doin what you do just to keep us sane people from ever forgetting what happens when patients run the insane asylum.
I hate to say this but Portland is a case study for what happens when a society goes all liberal, socialism progressive. It goes down the toilet and we all know where it ends up. Will people see and learn from the experience? probably not, as history is destined to repeat itself until the second coming.
I’ve tried to avoid the political stuff, and IMHO 95% of politicians are megalomaniacs who are in it does the power and the $, so I don’t even follow the political news AT ALL. but I will say this—these are jut the facts from CDC website: Oregon and Utah have roughly the same population, density, and similar demographics. Oregon has been locked down for a year, Utah has been almost completely open for a year, but they have essentially the same Covid deaths PER 100k. Draw your own conclusions.
I concur-BYU is a pretty good team and well coached. Consistency has been a problem, but given first year players, playing together it’s understandable. Size is a problem on the guard line and quickness on the frontline. George helps with the athleticism, but has not been the most consistent, example being St. John’s as playing well and then disappearing. However he probably hasn’t received the playing time he should have had. Can BYU defeat Gonzaga? Of course-any team can be defeated, but it is a game that has to managed well. Pacific, played Gonzaga about as well as anyone I’ve seen lately, but in my opinion, they played borderline dirty to do it and when the game was already decided, a vicious foul on Kispert, resulted in an ejection. So interior defense will be key on stopping Timme and Suggs from getting what they want inside. No matter, it should be a fun game to watch, with two very class-act coaches and two teams, in my opinion, that exemplifies what college athletics should look like
Agreed and agreed. I love watching GU play–watching a Mark Few team is like watching a Mark Pope team but with better players. I love that Pope started George and Lohner in what was really a practice game and I bet he starts them again tonight to try to keep up with GU’s superior athleticism.
It will be like a game that’s clean and one I will enjoy watching no matter who wins. I felt the same way about the Super Bowl-didn’t care who won, but I was happy for the Bucs just as I would have been happy for Andy or Patrick-that being said-go Cougars!
Great effort and for the most part very good team defense. If they can play with that intensity in their remaining games, they will be in every game. Hard to match the speed and quickness of Gonzaga, thus the turnovers and steals. Notably an outstanding defensive effort on Kispert. Suggs and Timme were tough to stop
In response to your comments on the post that was closed. I tried to envision next year for BYU and the 5 best players I saw on the court that will be here next year are:
Lohner
George
Harvard
Johnson
Knell
So in essence, there is work to be done. Whether Erickson, develops-we will see. But I see a big need for transfers in the backcourt and power forward positions. I don’t know whether you can really count on injured players that haven’t seen much action in two years and from what I’ve seen of Wade-just don’t think he is physical or quick enough to be a big time player
Gonzaga winning streak with Double scoring points Will continue. And BYU will continue with bad start and turnovers and when that streak going to end?
And I hope those three guys from Gonzaga well go NBA now well I mean at the end of this season. I know negative me but I am tired of this Rec league. Gonzaga should have gone MWC or Big East conference so that BYU will look into leaving to but where?
It’s all about the lack of intensity we start games with. Slow and predictable passing. Deer in the head lights. This was a winnable game without all the early turnovers.
I liked the fact more players are squaring up and shooting the 3s. We get open but weren’t looking for the shots.
Our bigs need to get the ball closer to the basket instead of 12 feet away and dribbling a bunch. Haarms needs to get on the block with more 2 man games.
Sometimes I wonder whether it might not be smart for BYU to be the leader in starting a new conference. Don’t really know if it would even be feasible. Might just be a fruitless dream. I know I would start with
Boise State
Utah State
Colorado State
Wyoming
BYU
Nebraska
Nevada
UNLV
Texas/San Antonio
Gonzaga/basketball
New Mexico
Notice I left out one state
