I have a friend who follows BYU more than most… His dad is one of the big donors for the Cougar club and my friend is addicted to all things BYU…
He is really excited about how this Cannon kid is playing… He thinks it may be the missing link for a successful year…
I don’t follow basketball as closely, but wanted to know what others thought about my friends assessment.
My third son’s first and middle name is Cannon McKay. I sent a link of the article when he transferred to my wife and said, “Check out his name.” 
I’ll be curious to see how his numbers hold up over the season, but so far he’s scrappy and consistent. Excellent defender on guards but struggles in mismatches as expected. He is 6 foot after all.
No fear. Plays hard like Davin Guinn did, but with a better shot. I like him. Especially to deal with small fast guards who can shoot.
I like Cannon discipline and staying focus. Same with other two players of Child & Bryant. Lets hope the whole team continue to improve one game at a time and we will see once wcc start.
One article I read it says after that Utah State game, Cannon was just staring at those Aggies Student section. I wonder what he was thinking. I was listening to Rise & Shout Podcast by Adam Mangum that he said one of the Aggies fan was holding up a sign that read “Welcome to HELL.” Lol!! Are you kidding me that they did that? Only NM and Wyo would do that but Aggies fans which was plain dumb.
I haven’t been to a game at USU and most are not televised here in Oregon, but I know their fans get into it. I like the fierce rivalries and the crazy student sections. When I was at BYU, our best hoops rivalry was with Wyoming, led by the 1st Team All-Name team Fennis Dembo and the villainous Erik Leckner. In 1987-88 both teams finished 26-6 and it was an awesome, fearsome rivalry. That BYU team lost to Louisville in the 2nd round, but what people forget is that Wyoming had made the Sweet 16 in the previous season and many thought they would be a final 4 team. But they were upset in the 1st round of the NCAA tourney in a shocking upset 119-115 to Loyola Marymount, who finished 28-4 and ruled the news cycle for the next two seasons, culminating with Hank Gather’s tragic death Bo Kimble’s beautiful and storybook left handed free throws in the NCAA tournament. I still remember sitting in my crappy apartment in Provo crying watching Bo shoot those foul shots, and rooting for LMU to go all the way.
Anyway, we played Wyo at home in February 1988. I was in the student section. We had given Wyo the top section of one of the Marriott Center end zones, and I remember it was all brown and yellow. Before the opening tip, when it was quiet, a big part of their section started chanting “F%$# You, BYU.” Then they tossed balsa wood airplanes with that written under the wings. It didn’t last long, and it was somehow terrible and ingenious all at the same time. My good friend from HS was a starting WR at WYO at the time, and you really had to be there to understand how much they hated BYU and how they viewed that hoops team as the one chance in 100 years to finally beat down the hated bully of the WAC, who beat everyone in everything.
Guinn was a great athlete–just didn’t have the game to go with it. Cannon similarly looks to be super strong, very quick, and a good leaper. He is super committed to staying between his man and the hoop, which we haven’t seen from a BYU PG in many years. Even KC, who could dominate in so many ways, didn’t have the lateral quickness to not get beat on the dribble by a fast guy. I’m super impressed so far with Hardnett and Cannon and their ability to be quick and strong enough to keep their hips facing the dribbler and force the dribbler lateral instead of letting him get the edge and force everyone to rotate. Cannon gave up a couple hoops in garbage time, but both he and Hardnett just locked down ISU’s Green in the part of the game that mattered. And nice to have two guards who CAN score, but don’t NEED to score to feel like they are validated as players.
You made my day, Tom. Beautiful story. I’ve had beer and piss dumped on me in Laramie. I remember Loyola M having 150 point games. I remember Leckner always palming the ball in his short NBA career to show everyone what big hands he had. I was at the game in Feb, 88. We got into it in the parking lot when a group of Wy fans called us some F-ing Mos. My brother and I waded into the bunch of them asking which ones were doing the talking. …Not a peep. Those were some great days.
Cannon, according to his coach is one of the 3 top players to come out of SE Idaho in the past 20 years. We will see but I like his moxy. A for the Cougs. we are allowing 9 less ppg in 2017 over 2016. I really like our guards.
per possession the Cougs are almost exactly the same as they were last year on defense. Their offense is doing better though…
The 9 points a game is basically just the team playing slower meaning fewer possessions and thus fewer points.
Last year as per the last several BYU played in the top ten tempo, 75.6 possessions per game. This year 69.7 this year. Only 1 game this year would have been as fast as average last year.
Those stats don’t tell the true story of how different this team is. UVU could not get an open look at a 3 going 1-8 on their home floor…that has not happened for BYU in decades. BYU has never ever defensed the 3 for beans and yet I saw it with mine own two eyes. Utah State 8-25 three attempts and if you take McEwen out (he went 5-9 from 3) again you see a lot of desperate shots with no makes. Redbirds made 7-24, Bruinga made 5 of those. BYU let him take them because he is a bench guy who nobody scouts. If the game was close, we would have shut him down too but we were up by 25 so BYU let him shoot. So we shut down open looks at 3s this season
. Secondly,
BYU is a far different team this year and TLarimer pointed it out. Our guards, namely Hardnett, Cannon and Bryant are staying in front of their guards and when you shut down guards from penetration, teams can’t get easy fouls on our bigs or easy 3 looks from kickouts. We have a serious problem at Center but Center is not that important. You win and lose with guards and BYU has some good guards. As an example, last year BYU had talent at Center but it did not mean a hill of beans because our guard play was poor. Everything starts and ends with good guard play.
absotutely.
I think that is what I was pointing out…the 9 points a game difference do not tell the whole story.
14.3 last year vs 17.6 seconds this year per offensive possession.
this year the defensive possessions are averaging 16.9 to last years 17.5.
Last year’s defense was different but opponents were taking longer to get their shots off than this year.
You forgot to mention that a lot of them were drunk (must have brought their booze from Wyoming) and they were making noise during the prayer as well. I was there too. I didn’t see any of that as ingenious… I don’t have a lot of patience for disrespect. The airplane idea was okay.
Nobody knows who the other two are… LOL. He has had a fantastic start so far. Let’s see how he does when BYU goes up against a good team and he has to play against higher level guys.
Harold… that is about a half a second. It is a meaningless stat. If the difference were a couple seconds then I could see it meaning something. The offensive possession stat is more significant, it means they are showing some patience and unselfish play. I am still waiting for Haws to start being the petulant brat because of Cannon. It has to be eating him up inside… but maybe he will use something he got from his mission and get through this trial… 
Rose can bench him this year, whereas last year, he did not have a good backup to come in for Haws. With Hardnett and Cannon, Rose has a lot options at guard. BYU really only has one weakness and that is at Center. Can you imagine what we would look like with Mika?
So here’s how I look at this year’s team and why I am cautiously optimistic about this team. Road Games. And we will know more about our team after this week with Weber and Utah. I wrote down 9 teams that I thought we could lose to and we just beat 2 of them so there you go
I’m optimistic because I’m seeing progress on good habits. If that continues, I’m happy this year. I’m not overly concerned about where place so long as we get experience and improve flaws. Rotations are better this year, much faster. Better on ball defense. I still see a few guys losing their mark off ball and occasionally a break down in the pickn’roll coverage.
Actually rebounding technique is the one thing that gets me the most with this team. We get enough most of the time but still…fix the technique, especially the guards.
The USU game was very fun to watch and I was amazed by the Cannon kids poise. The best part of watching in person was the USU student body (which is one of, if not the most inventive in the country) started a chant when BYU got ahead in the second half …”we want Emery” … which made a few of us chuckle!
So basically you don’t really care if BYU wins basketball games, what really matters is if they look good losing games?
Okay… to each his own. 
That is not what he said (In my opinion), he said he is happy if he sees improvement in the players, rotation, decisions or “good habits”, the record is not as important as “Improvement” for each player and the team overall.
I think that is where he is coming from.
Exactly. I’d love to go undefeated but I can enjoy improvement too!
One of the things I enjoyed watching in Rose’s early years was not just the year on year improvement…which has been less common of late…but also just the improvement over the course of the year. The improvement over the course of the year, which does add up to better records, just hasn’t been happening as much of late.