The problems going forward

Unless we beat the zags twice, and sweep everyone else, or win the tourney (HA) we’re done. Probably headed to the NIT.

So let’s synthesize the raging complaints. The goal is the tourney. Outside of Rose, BYU doesn’t have a long record of excellent basketball production. There are a few spots but Rose has the best record of production. That’s a great accomplishment but it’s time to raise the bar. The new goal should be consistent top 68 appearances. The NIT is not acceptable.

So either we win the tourney consistently or we sweep everyone else and go .500 vs St. Zags. Either way, the key is consistency. We have the talent, Rose is an excellent recruiter. We even have the balance to beat everyone and no weaknesses at any position in theory. The only problem is we’re not consistent. When we play our stuff at St. Mary’s we win. We’ve shown we can beat the Zags. But we’re not consistent in those games and we’re not consistent against bad teams.

Why?

  • I like it when we run a motion offense with a lot ball movement and off ball player movement. I don’t even necessarily care which sets, it just clicks. But sometimes our players get flustered and we abandon that.
  • Rose also gets flustered and abandons it and lets players do what they’re comfortable doing and we see a lot of one on one dribble penetration. And we’ve got talented guys who can do that. But we need to calm down and run our stuff.
  • The lineups don’t make sense to me. Let’s quit it with the 4 guard lineups. Stop putting zach at the 4, I’d rather get him a size advantage vs a 2 guard. Eli is being over played and it will lead to injuries. It’s just time to give dastrup 20 and let him develop confidence. Yo is not a center.
  • We start slow, I think? And that leaves the door open. We need to make teams feel hopeless.
  • Rose overplays guys and they get tired early. Research shows you don’t want to max out a player early. They need better periodic rest.

And to be open, this is where I think minutes should be:

5: 50/50 between luke and Payton.
4: 28/12 Yo and Nix
3: 30/10 Eli and Rylan
2: 25/15 TJ and Zach
1: 25/15 Shire and cannon

Only yank guys if they get lost. Once they stop running the system consistently. I don’t mind TJ taking over a possession to drive at the hoop as long as he produces and he doesn’t do it often. I don’t mind Payton taking open threes as long as he quits hesitating. If they leave our bigs open, green light the shot so they feel confident. At this point, we’re just worried about development so play the guys you need to develop. If you do pull someone, talk for 30 seconds and send them back. I don’t really mind missed shots as long as you took them in rhythm.

Good points, Clause. I see our offense spending too much time in ineffective formations. Like the 3 man weave where we dribble and hand off outside of the 3 point line. Rose loves that for some reason. We need to attack more via finding advantages and exploiting them.

I agree that Seljaas isn’t a stretch 4. Our team, in general seems slow to me. Not much burst other than TJ who can look great sometimes creating. Hardnett is easy to guard because he always goes left. Saturday at the Kennel could be ugly.

It’s very popular in college as a simple way to mess with alignment or force matchup issues but a disciplined defense rarely gets hurt by it. Honestly, I like the idea of putting the ball in the Yo’s hands in the high post and run pindown and back screens to free up harndet and haws off ball moving to the basket. While the ball is stationary, the other 4 look like a blender.
Others: Dastrup back screen and replace to the corner for Eli, Double screen for TJ off ball, Screening Yo’s defender off ball with a gaurd.

You get around that by emphasizing the pass. I agree with you. Eli is a good threat too.

Or it could be our best game all year. Who knows? CONSISTENCY man! That’s what I want. So frustrating.

I have been talking about developing the best players for months… and that meant Dastrup. I said it would be a mistake not to. Well, when is Rose going to stop the nonsense? He isn’t and now he is paying the price, just like the team does every year.

Had a chance to see Virginia play Duke last week. That’s the way basketball should be played. No weaving around for 20 seconds, which means mostly your guys are running around while the D can just relax but be ready if you decide to drive (which for Bryant works as he can finish, but for Haws is a disaster as he gets knocked around like a ping pong ball and with some exceptions, ends up making a bad play or getting a turnover.

The teams above utilized quick passing, both around the perimeter and to a low post player in the middle, until they find a seam or an open shot. Very efficient and very disciplined. On D, there hands are up and passes (not only shots) are contested. BYU allows too many easy passes, and regrettably, all but Bryant can’t stay in front of their perimeter player, and hence the defense gets picked apart.

One thing I really noticed was the play in the post. Ball comes in at around 8-10’, guy is well guarded and immediately ball goes out. Post player backs down for better position and ball comes right back, now in much better position and good shots result. Different with BYU. Ball goes into post player (after long weave and time is low), post player is 8-10’out and generally will make some attempt to score. No out-in, out in and fighting for better position n the process. Just one observation of many.

I just think we run a real inefficient offense and it’s been that way for most of Rose’s years. Jimmer was able to score from so far out and drive and make spectacular shots that his last two years masked that serious problem. We don’t have a Jimmer and likely never will again. Rose’s just flat out needs to up his teaching on offense and install one that makes better use of more than one inside guy.

Joseph Girard III who is from Glen Falls, NY already broke Jimmer all time record and he is a Junior. BYU offer him a scholarship 2 years ago. Many schools are offering scholarship in him too. I would love to have him here at the Y. Another year to see if he comes.

I agree. You can’t outrun the ball and passing can make up for a lack of athleticism by letting lesser athletes operate without the ball. There are so many possible iterations that would work. I do think this team needs 2 bigs on the floor and at the same time 5 guys who threaten from 3. Which, in theory, we can do. Yo’s shot is ugly but it does go in enough for college and Nixon has a good shot but just doesn’t take it that much. And no one guards them!!! I didn’t even mention Dastrup.

Rose absolutely overplays his studs, they get gassed and have nothing at the end in a tight game. Don’t get me started on substitutions. 0 points from the bench is all on the coaches.

Dastrup is a better defender then Seljaas, Better outside shooter, debatable but look at the stats. Has won two games for us, Utah and a Pacific game. Efficient passer, rebounder. So why does Seljaas get the minutes and Dastrup not? Dastrup has A.D.D. or something but I would still play him in a Yo, Eli lineup. Just work at it until teams have to play bog boy ball to keep up with us. Seljaas is a 6 or 7th man or should be a shooting guard.

Man, Rose rarely makes opposing teams have to alter their lineups to play us. I would have Nixon and Dastrup tattooing their bigs and eating butts and elbows all night. Patton said it best, " A good offense beats a good defense every time".

I agree. He should be coming off the bench for Haws and playing as a long 2 gaurd. He’s actually a fairly nifty scorer in the paint and I like that size mismatch as opposed to him getting beat up by a 4.

Dastrup drives me nuts but the potential and heart is there. I’m the biggest like fan there is and I’ve said it all season and I’ll continue to say it. He runs the floor, he’s steady on offense and doesn’t break the flow. Excellent team defense. But Luke can’t hit threes and that’s an element we need to improve our spacing. If only we could combine Luke and dastrup…

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Did you see the blowup between Childs and Dastrup late in the game? Looks like Dastrup is the whipping horse on the team. I’d transfer if I was him

Yes, I did. What was that about?

I didn’t see it. I hope he sticks it out. And I hope we recognize what we have.

The golden opportunity for us is to be able to put 5 players on the floor who can threaten from 3 while simultaneously maintaining size on defense. That is the starting point that could unlock consistency.

A guard/forward was driving baseline for Gonzaga. Childs was under the basket, ran forward and tried to block him while Dastrup came from the weak side and ended up knocking Childs into the Zag player. I hope that was all it was. Childs just letting Dastrup that he had the play and Dastrup screwed up by getting involved.

It did not carry on past that moment from what I saw.

I like your thinking. Hardnett, Eli, Haws, Dastrup, Childs would be a lineup I could do damage with. Everyone of the guards can drive. We would be tough inside on D and rebounds. Everyone from 1-5 can hit a 3 and would have to be covered all the way out, that in turn would create gaps in their defense for driving and dishing. Nixon and Worthington could spell the bigs. Cannon and Seljaas would spell the guards. Bergerson will be special next year (I’m feeling it)

I don’t have access to a large data set and I don’t know what the +/- for those lineups is but I feel good about it. That’s a 9 man rotation and you could even use bergerson to spell eli on occasion when you don’t want to give up too much size and want cannon and hardnet on the floor at the same time.

Anybody have access to the full statistics? I know you can get to it behind some paywalls I just haven’t bothered.

What happened?

Dastrup plays like a scared kid out there. The mental games that Rose has played with his head have rendered him useless at this point. Yoeli was looking for a scapegoat and probably just followed the coaches lead. Childs didn’t do a thing at the end of the game to help the team win… missing in action. He got a technical (or was that against LMU?) and he just looked lost against the Zags. Haws got hot and all of a sudden he became the reincarnation of Jimmer in Rose’s eyes. They forgot about the TEAM concept and let it get away with help from the refs. That is the script we have witnessed so many times before.

Dastrup should transfer… there isn’t room for a 4 star recruit with huge upside on this team. BYU is a third place wcc team and fading into obscurity quickly. I would say they are on the down side and it could get worse before it gets better.

This should have been the group months ago. All the excuses in the world can’t convince me that Dastrup wouldn’t have performed if given a REAL chance. Rose refused to do that and now it is too late.

I hate to keep saying it, but I said this would happen months ago. I lay it all at the feet of the coaching staff.

It’s sad; I agree. Missed opportunities

At the same time, it’s good to remind ourselves why sports? Or specifically why be a sports fan? There are plenty of people whose team or teams will never win. Or be like us and feel frustrated. It’s an interesting question. I answer it differently as I gain experience, but my current answer is this:

It’s a balance. To never give up and always shoot as high as you can and give everything to win and then when you fall short, to not be discouraged or give up by telling yourself it’s good enough. It’s a strange sort of deluded optimism. Even if you know you only have a 1% chance of winning, you find the strategy that gives you the best chance at hitting that 1% chance by giving it your all, again, and keeping your head high and your mind centered when it all goes for nothing. It’s not deluded exactly. You still have to accept reality and deal with the true situation, but it’s the magic of learning that hope balanced with the faith to act and give yourself the best chance.

I feel deeply about it and struggle expressing my thoughts. Learning to put so much passion into something and still be happy when it fails because the outcome is beyond your control is a hard lesson to learn in real life. But sports isn’t real life, and yet it teaches us so much. Regardless of the outcome we can enjoy the journey. I even enjoy yelling at the refs.

I agree Jim! It gets tiring as every single year the bench is undeveloped and usually we lose a kid or 2 who has large upside potential and they transfer. How would this team look with Chatman on it??? Much different for sure. Beo scores 58 in the EWU intra squad and on and on. Dastrup should get more pt also. The true freshman needs time on the court also. I think he may be a very good player if he stays at the Y.

BTW, I went to the GU BYU game on sat. There was an Interesting recruit sitting on the end line, far end of the court from BYU, first row who was attending the game with what appeared to be his parents and little sister. GU fans were highly interested in he kid. He was there an hour before the game started. At least 7 ft tall and looked and walked like an athlete.

Any.gueses on who it was??? Anyone??