Things that are still gnawing at me

and I have a couple of questions I would like some input on. I would appreciate honest, well thought out comments too.

  1. As good as Mika played, did Landale outplay him? and this is a serious question because I look at the stat line and it appears to me that Landale had the better overall line. Mika never got into foul trouble but played less than 30 minutes… why? Why did Rose sit him for long periods when he was seemingly unstoppable?

  2. Everyone (including coach Rose) talks about BYU’s inside-out game but if it really worked the way it is supposed to, Mika and Childs would have an assist or two, wouldn’t they? They combined for ZERO assists in this game. Way too often Bryant, Emery and Haws would force themselves to the basket and take bad shots. In my opinion that was a killer.

  3. This will be the toughest question and I thought about it when I was thinking about what makes a good coach. My brothers high school basketball coach (who had an unfortunate stretch of coaching his own sons) was very good in my opinion. He got the most out of the average talent he had at the local high school. I saw teams with basically very little or no talent do amazing things with him as the coach. So having said that, does Rose get the most out of his teams? Has he coached a less talented/skilled group of players to relatively successful seasons in spite of it? I always get the feeling that BYU teams, in spite of the appearance of “success” are mostly underachieving. I guess a case could be made for the success of the Jimmer years but we know Jimmer was a special college player. So has Rose ever gotten more than expected out of a team?

I would like to hear honest input, even from guys like Harold… :wink:

Landale (7’ 260?) is bigger than Mika and Mika struggled in one on one defense. I thought it was crazy to play zone, but maybe Rose did it to help with Landale. They play differently, so I’d say Landale-Mika was a tie. Mika seemed a bit tired - I think that’s why Rose sat him. And Rose figured Kaufusi could body up on Landale.

To address #2 and #3, we just aren’t very good. Rose is a good coach but our academic and moral standards make it difficult to recruit great talent.

The mystery I can’t solve is how we can be 11-5 against mediocre competition when we have 4-5 guys that were ESPN top 100 players. People smarter than me can maybe help out there.

Oh please! Not very good talent? We have the best talent right now since 1980. Unbelievable comment :-/~
I agree about Mika. The game before he was sick. Perhaps he wasn’t completely well yet. Also, after he got his 28 he wasn’t able to score again. Gassed!

When I coached Frosh-soph I had as many as 17 on a team. The one thing I did was not give players playing time if they didn’t deserve it from practice. If I did I was just setting them up for failure later on in their high school time. I think Rose does the same thing. We don’t know what is going on in practice. Why Bryant and Kaufusi played first instead of Beo and Dastrup. I’m sure it has to do with attitude and hard work in practice. Young team and they have to know the path for playing time.
With that said, there were times we got in the lane and made bad decisions. On the other hand, there were 8-10 times guards got in the lane and blew layups and short shots too. Childs blew 4 baby hooks. Rose doesn’t miss the layup; Haws doesn’t miss 3 uncontested 6-8 footers; Childs makes 2 of the 4 baby hooks and we possibly win and are having a different discussion.
Next year, we are having a totally different discussion because with age and experience, we aren’t missing those shots. See, coaching also takes patience too. :upside_down_face:

interesting comments…

but they didn’t answer anything I asked about. Perhaps you should put the comment in another thread or start your own thread where you can talk about how Rose’s coaching mirrors your own or the always insightful comment about how BYU would have won if they had made more baskets.

Come on man, read my 3 questions and give me some input…

Also, where is fish’ “scouting Pacific” post?

I answered them but you didn’t want to learn :wink:

How’s this…

If Pacific would make all their shots from close in they might win this game.

How is that for some in-depth analysis?

Nope. Poor analysis.
Keep the starters in and we score 130 points. And Bryant looked great out there.

I was at the game but I don’t know that I can shed much light beyond what has been said. I generally agree with what Craig saidbut here is my take.

  1. Yes, Landale was every bit as good as Mika in my opinion. He was showing great touch on his jump hooks and he had 6 assists to zero for Mika. He was 11-13 on shooting which was better than Mika who was 12-17. He had a very good game—slightly better than Mika in my opinion.

  2. Landale was actually better than our bigs at our own game. He was able to kick the ball out to the open man and got 6 assists. St. Marys is even better on defense than Gonzaga. They pretty much shut down our perimeter game. It was hard to get open looks. They didn’t double team Mika or Childs so there weren’t open players to kick the ball to very often. Since Mika and Childs were not being doubled, they tried to score rather than kick the ball out. When they did kick the ball out, the guards were having their own troubles in getting good shots and tried to send the ball back into Mika. Mika couldn’t be stopped without a double team but St Marys decided they would let Mika get his and just shut down the perimeter. Yes, our guards pressed a lot, especially when Mika was out. They tried to drive hoping to draw fouls. The refs decided to let the players play. BYU has been averaging 25.5 free throws per game. We only got 12 attempts versus St Marys. I personally hate it when the refs call too many fouls but still, you want the refs to be consistent from game to game as much as possible. The result was that no one other than Mika was scoring much. Elijah finally broke double figures but that was it other than Mika. St. Marys had four players scoring in double figures.

  3. Regarding Rose as a coach, I really don’t have much I can say with authority. I think that generally, Rose is well respected in the coaching circles. Some of the respect is for him as a person. I’ve heard players comment that he is a lot like Edwards was—a players’ coach. Mark Pope used to compliment Rose for the way he was able to get his players to gel and play well together, especially once season play began. His teams generally get better as the season progresses. I heard Rose comment today about how difficult it is to get good continuity with players due to the mission program. That is definitely a consideration if you wonder why his teams take time to gel every year. He is excited that he will have a little more continuity in the coming years. As far as recruiting, I think he does pretty good considering the challenges of the honor code compliance. The new basketball practice facility should help the recruiting effort so I’m hoping BYU will get better players coming in.

The thing about the free throws and letting teams play, in the first half, we shot 10 free throws. 2 in the second half while SM shot a bunch! I don’t like that. The rest of your analysis is good.
The youthfulness is the reason for the pressing and missing 8-10 layups and/or short in the lane open shots. With that in mind, we handled SM pretty well and could have won.

I think we will have a real shot of beating St Marys next time around. Bryant is going to eat up a lot of the minutes that LJ Rose has been getting. He is going to be a tough match up for St Marys next time around. Maybe I need to curb my enthusiasm but I think with time, Bryant and Mika will be our biggest weapons and will get all the game planning from opposing teams.

Except if they do, Haws and Emery will derail them. I think a key is if Childs shows up. With two low post players makes it difficult to guard us. Hey! No Aytes tonight. What happen to him?

8"s was ill and stayed home last Thursday games against smc. No report on 8’s not playing against Pacific.

Mika had something a couple of weeks ago. So did Haws. We could have used 8s against SM.

Why do you think I have been harping on Rose this year? He finally has all the pieces to play a complete game and he squanders it by not developing his bench or focusing on a good D game plan. He needs to either retire or evolve.

Rose will always have ridiculous offensive stats. He is a O guru but on D, he sucks plain and simple. That pathetic 1-3-1 defensive joke against a disciplined SMC team kind of proves the point, doesn’t it? One of these days I will write up what Coach Rose needs to do to be a great coach.

Interesting thread. I have some thoughts. I also think Mika was getting over his recent illness and was a little weak. But I also want to say that Landale played lousy defense against Mika. I think it was a standoff. Question two. A great inside out game requires great passing. I look at the five bigs and only one of them has really good passing skills at this point. From what I saw last night, it was Dastrup. He has the best court awareness and passing skills at this point, I think he is a little out of shape. The best court awareness and passing skills belongs, hands down, to Haws. Those are not freshman skills that he has. As for Coach for coach Rose and getting the most out of his players. This is a really young team. We won’t know this answer with this team for at least one more year. We will see inklings, but for the most part, that answer, is yet to come. My personal thought is that answer is yes. More than anything, it is about team. The application of special skills and potential are in place. These are freshmen and sophmores on this team. Patience will tell the story. Coaches and fans.
Jeff

Mika is a real good passer. Dastrup was playing against their worst players. Top 100 Isn’t the same as Top 10 like the big schools get. They are ready to play right away. They don’t need a year to mature.

Who says he isn’t developing his bench? The question is why aren’t the bench players developing themselves. The word is they do great in practice but not so in games.

You don’t understand the humor, made evident by the fact that you say the same exact thing when BYU loses a game. In fact you did it more than once in this thread. So your comment is more in line with the things you said actually. Maybe now you will see the light?

Actually he is not. He is getting better, but all those points and zero assists against St. Mary’s sort of proves it. If you were to ask all the nba scouts what he could improve on, I guarantee you that all of them would say he needs to learn how to pass the ball better, move it around quickly, have better court awareness, etc.

Yeah… just like the two of them “derailed” St. Mary’s. :stuck_out_tongue:

Dastrup is a much better passer than Mika but a lesser overall player right now. One reason he plays against the “worst players” is because he is always playing in garbage time. His top 100 talent is being misused and wasted because Rose would rather play Shaw and Kaufusi :astonished:

What is your point? There are more than 10 “big schools” so the comment is a moot point. Having as many top 100 recruits as BYU does is noteworthy. Go ahead and tell everyone where you draw the line of who is ready to play and who is not. Only the top 10 guys or do you cut it off at 20 or 50?.. nonsense.

Yeah, it is so easy to come into a game completely cold and play 2 minutes. If you aren’t all world it’s back to the bench. How exactly does that help? Everyone has to find their role on a TEAM. It’s about chemistry, defense, knowing when to shoot or get a better shot, being patient, etc. Who really knows what the problem is but nobody can deny that there is one.

I know, I know… wait until next year. :smirk: