The state of BYU basketball (code word for Rose's coaching style)

Basketball
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I want to temper the things I say with a huge disclaimer. Nowhere in America does a coach have to deal with 2 year missions and an restrictive honor code. Nowhere do players take a 2 year hiatus then attempt to play at the highest level college BBall… BYU used to win league championships regularly, we haven’t even had a smell since we joined the WCC. The short answer is that Gonzaga was not part of the MWC. I looked at the rating for the MWC this year and the top rated team, BSU #73, then SDSU #81. The MWC has not been the same since Alford left for UCLA but in no way can it compare to the WCC with BYU at #54, SMC at #18 and GU at #9.

TO be the best, you have to beat the best. GU is on top, Few builds teams to play Big Boy ball, winning the WCC is secondary to his goals, he wants titles. He recruits components in the same manner that Popovich does for San Antonio, they just reload each year. That will never change as long as they are there. They force teams to react to their style. They are serious about defense. Rose will never beat a Few team consistently, it’s like showing up for a knife fight and Few has 2 knives to your 1.

Rose could emulate Bennett if he wanted. Bennett doesn’t get the athletes he wants but he sure gets every ounce out of his players. Rose would have to eliminate his up tempo style game but then that is as much his signature as Obamacare is to Obama. To sit tight and make every single possession count is Bennett’s signature and he takes slow white guys and runs it to perfection. Rose needs to take that SMC game and work the kinks out of SMC’s pick and roll because that is the foundation that every single team starts with when initiate their offense against MAN defense.

So let’s dive into SMC vs, BYU. Naar or Rahon would have their center come up and set a pic on Haws. That leaves Naar driving with Mika on him. Naar either fades back to lunch a 3 or pass to another 3 but either way, now you have Mika guarding a guard far far away from the basket. Launch it and SMC’s Bigs get the rebound, make it or drive and dish. We never solved it all night. When we went to a 1-3-1, SMC just passed the ball bringing more guards over to stack a side with more players than BYU could cover. easy open 3s and when a BYU Big ran out to bother an open 3, it was always too late and now there are more SMC bigs under the basket in case the ball misses the mark, either way, SMC dominated a better BYU team on the boards and on their 3s. Game- set -match.

In the Marriott, BYU can out duel SMC just because the road teams 3ball % goes down. But BYU has to change how we defend the pic and roll. If you run a Big out, you have to get him back under the basket, that means Haws has to be pasted to Naar so that Mika can settle back to defend the SMC Big and the rebound. That also means that Emery and Rose or Bry cannot be caught watching what the pic and roll is doing because if they even blink, their guy has slipped by for a back door or headed to an open spot for an easy 3. Gonzaga driving to the basket is code word for drive and dish to the open 3. Rose has never ever defended these basic offenses well. He has the pieces now so we will see.

He has a bye this year because his team is so young but if we see this same pattern next year, he has to go.

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And yet Rose has beat Few’s teams 5 out of the last 6 years. Not a winning record of course. But Few is certainly aware of Rose’s record against him.

A bye this year? Ever since the UVU game people around this board have been looking for him to be gone.
Has to go? Given more NCAA wins than any coach in BYU history, I’d be surprised if he was ushered out. If he doesn’t live up to his own standard by the time TJ leaves I suspect he’ll leave of his own accord. But of course I don’t expect that to happen. You apparently do. Time will of course prove you right. Though I hope I’m wrong about the NIT this year.

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I see no reason to replace Rose. What end up with Cleveland again? We need to step back and let the UVU game go. What’s happening is Trump syndrome replacement with UVU syndrome.

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BYU had a rough start to the season. Part of the problem was due to injuries to projected starters. Part of the problem was due to inexperience. I think the general consensus on this board is that we get behind Rose and see how this team finishes before we start calling for changes. It doesn’t hurt to express a little frustration to how the season has gone so far but, as Fish pointed out from the Wruebel tweet, BYU guards have been shooting much better since league started. Shot selection is improving although it can still improve. Bryant is back and playing well. Hopefully, this team will gel and finsh strong. Whether its watching the passing of Haws to Mika or Mika dominating the paint, or Emery and Bryant finishing at the rim, it is a fun team to watch.

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He’ll leave on his own possible after TJ finished or he’ll stick around. I remember LaVell got booed coaching at the Y. Have we heard anyone chanting him to go or got booed? Give him time with this young team.

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Agree 100%.

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Dew, I realize that my remarks are incendiary but don’t take them out of context. I am one of his biggest fans. He was dealt with a the blow of having to move to the WCC and play in high school gyms, a term I coin, “the Rec. League”. The Marriott is the 2nd largest venue in college basketball and yet we are stuck in the Rec. League because Thompson would not allow BYU to stay in the MWC once we went Indy in Football.

Rose has brought talent to BYU over the last 3 years that we all did not think would be possible given our affiliation with the WCC. I have been on record as saying that many of these talented players, Childs, Saljaas, Beo, Dastrup stated that they signed in part because of the LP3. Rose now has the talent. Gone are the days of BYU lacking a true PG or a legit Power Forward or Center. We now are a balanced team. Now we can’t squander that talent.

Ultimately Rose answers to the boosters, and the fans and now that we have 6 ESPN top 100 players you can bet that we will ask for heads to roll when BYU losses at home to a #213 UVU or we go on our annual 3 road loss routine in the WCC where we lose to a San Diego or a Pacific. Good teams don’t do that. Rose has a history of doing that because of his coaching style. We will see if he can make the changes.

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Interesting article! I’ll vent a little frustration since others have too. Coaches claim that they don’t read what’s in the local media but then they react to it and blow that assertion out of the water. Rose knows that fans are unhappy with how this season has gone so far. Just as Fish and Jim have been harping, there is a growing number of fans that don’t like what they see happening with the program. For years, the complaint was that there wasn’t enough talent. This year, we have the talent but we’re still seeing the same level of play. If you read the comment section of the article, you see the exact attitude that Jim has been telling us…excuse after excuse as to why we can’t compete at a higher level. Many of the comments say fans need to realize we can’t recruit the athletes to compete at a higher level. My response to that: “Show me a player on the St. Marys team that is more athletic than the BYU players.” I have to agree with Jim and Fish that coaches need to be accountable for the job they’re doing. When a coach becomes well-liked in the community as Dave Rose is, it is far too easy for many fans to give him a pass for underachieving. I’m not calling for Rose’s job but I think he needs to be accountable and show that he can get this team to improve. We pay coaches high enough salaries that they can step down without worries that they will not be able to provide for their families. It is a very competitive job and its not meant to be a highly secure, career-long appointment. Maybe this is a little harsh but I want to see things improve just as Fish and others have outlined.

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Could not have said it any better, Glenn.

Defense is 50% of the game and when I see guys half running out the guard, raising an arm a yard away, that is an open look. That is also bad Coaching. Early in the year we saw a ton of that. Legendary Coaches work a defensive mindset. For an example, I will use Utah’s Whittingham. His signature is a top 10 defense, does it every year but he has gone through 10 OCs in 10 years. He always suffers at QB…and now he has a new guy that put Eastern Washington on the map. It will be interesting to see if he lasts but Whit focuses on D and a punishing rushing attack to eat clock and a passing attack often is code word for a tired defense.

I think we can have good defense but to do that Rose would have to change to a:

  1. Value Possession offense over a Run and Gun approach
  2. He would have to start recruiting some “lock down” defensive types instead of all Mr. Basketball guys.

I had hoped that Rose would have used Guinn at a much higher rate but then he now has Bry, who has as good of defensive skills and is 6’5 and yet comes with high volume scoring ability. I guess we will all wait and see.

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Just over 1/2 a season played with only one starter from last year in the starting line-up and all these complaints and all this impatience. Methinks people are victims of their unrealistic expectations. Davis, who started last year had his career ended with an injury, Kaufusi started on and off last year and couldn’t even play until late Dec. which means he hasn’t practiced with the team until recently. The roster had a major, major overhaul. I don’t remember the exact number of players returning from last season but I think it may be 5… One them is finished, Davis, one hasn’t played most of the year, Kaufusi, Aytes hardly played at all last year, and Guinn is a walk on. The talent is better than it has been in years, but the team is a work in progress. There is really only one guy form last year who has played a lot this year, Emery. A lot of fans thought this team would be world beaters right out of the gate but most impartial observers saw it as a talented but inexperienced team that would have growing pains. If Rose can keep all the talent together I think they could become the best BYU team ever, but that would be next year, or the year after. They just haven’t played enough together to have the cohesion to be great right now. That is how I have looked at it from the beginning.

I am withholding any judgment until the season is over. The key word is experience right now, not coaching and not recruiting. One really bad loss (UVU) was an aberration because the team didn’t really play that badly in any of the other losses and a play or two here and there and nearly every other game could have been won. They will win most of those kinds of games next year if not later this year…I am also not making any predictions about anything for this year because if I get carried away I am likely to be disappointed.

I have to smile about people who complain about a more athletic BYU team losing to a very experienced St. Mary’s team that has this alleged all world coach who incidentally got nailed for recruiting violations recently. Steve Fisher as a tactical coach is barely average but he can recruit like the dickens, and is a heckuva a nice guy, Rose did extremely well against him with less talent. How quickly we forget.

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My comment about BYU being more athletic than St Marys was in response to those posters in the newspaper article who argue that we can’t expect BYU to be able to play better because we just can’t get the athletes. But, I’d argue that since joining the WCC, BYU has had better athletes than St. Marys. I just don’t buy that as an excuse to not doing better in our league. The other argument we’ve heard is that we didn’t have the facilities to attract better players and help develop the players we have. Now we have the MCA which is a top notch practice facility that players have been using since the beginning of the season. We have the talent and the facilities so the coaching is getting more scrutiny. I’m like you and just hope we have a strong second half of the season. I’m fine withholding judgement on the season until the end. As you pointed out, the team needs more experience. Time will tell whether you are right to just be patient and trust that the coaching staff has things under control.

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We have the athletes now but going up against a skilled team with guys who have played together several years as opposed to a young team that is completely rebuilt will usually result in the more skilled team winning unless there is a big disparity in athletic talent.

I just think some people are overreacting to just over a 1/2 season of growing pains with essentially a completely rebuilt team no matter how talented it is. It is very good talent but it isn’t Kentucky & Duke level talent with multiple top twenty recruits as opposed to top 100.

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I’m fine with waiting until tournament time and end of season but if the deer in the headlights show up…

That is the worst…

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love your voice of reason.

I may have “gushed” about Bennett’s coaching style because he does more with non athletes but it is not lost on me that got caught cheating. I was looking at the numbers today and BYU is ranked 5th in game pace, one spot behind of Kentucky but then we are talking about 2 different animals. Top 100 vs Top 20 recruits.

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I also would point out that BYU as a while was ranked 5th in sears cup or total program.

BYU also ranks #5 over the past 10 years in total football wins. So how in the world are we stuck in this no man’s land of being outside a P5 conference. Uuuuaaaaggggghhhhh.

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Jarod LLoyd wrote this today:

I also think part of it has been anticipating the arrival of the current group of Cougar players, particularly the hype surrounding Eric Mika, Nick Emery and TJ Haws.
But they are in Provo now and more than halfway through their first season back together.
There are some positive signs of improvement but barring something pretty special either in the next month or in the WCC tournament, BYU will have a tough time getting an at-large bid to the NCAA tourney this year.
I think most Cougar fans might give their team a little bit of leeway because of the youth BYU had coming into the year — but they have every reason to believe that things should be changing in seasons to come.
If the Cougars miss the Big Dance in 2017-18 and/or 2018-19, then I think it will be safe to say that BYU is not meeting reasonable expectations.

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Most of us here post to blow off a little frustration and are, at the core, die-hard BYU fans and love the programs. We vent because we care rather than just being cynical and critical hacks. A lot has been said about the loss to UVU which is at 9-9 and has lost to some pretty weak teams since knocking off BYU. A lot has been said about the use of the 1-3-1 defense most of the game against St Marys. I don’t have an answer for that one. We really don’t have the personnel to run the 1-3-1. You need a tall, athletic player at the top of the zone to make that defense work. It was pretty good last year with KC at the top. Why did Rose stick with it rather than mixing up the defenses? Oh well, time to move on. As you said, BYU played well last night. Emery was on fire the first half! I would have liked for his teammates to have kept feeding the hot player the second half. Emery got into foul trouble and didn’t get a lot of chances the second half. But, this team has other guys that can score. Its great to have multiple weapons for attacking a team. Mika was unstoppable the second half. It was a nice win for BYU.

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Glenn, you should be posting you thoughts under the SF takeaways. I love hearing about fan’s takes on what we are doing well or poorly at. Encouraged but the way my mind works is BYU is 16-5 for the 3rd time in 3 years…what does that say? Is the WCC a 3 dance league? Wrubel points out that BYU is the 325th youngest team in the NCAA.
BYU has a 38% chance of making the dance.

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The emergence of Elijah Bryant takes the sting off of losing Davis. Takes BYU closer to being a contender.

BYU is really in a bad situation this year created by a very good SMC team. From a NCAA stand point the WCC has been a 2 dance team probably since BYU joined but never a 3. BYU would have to beat either Gonzaga or SMC on the road to guarantee a dance card. UVU made sure of that…

The positive in all this is that BYU is so young and really improving at a fast pace (I hold my enthusiasm for after our annual road swings and head scratcher losses to WCC bottom dancers).

Childs, Haws and Elijah have really picked up their games exponentially as the season progresses. Our FT % is winning games we lost last year.
:grinning:

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and yet in 2012 Gonzaga, SMC, and BYU all made the tournament.