CougarCorner

We won! Fun game.

Couple initial thoughts:
1) This was the first game of the season I was to see.
2) The last few years of BYU basketball have been hard for me to watch. I just couldn't get into the teams. Even when we won it was frustrating. While this team may not make meet or exceed expectations, I enjoyed watching them play and will be making a point to watch future games. I'm excited to see what they can do.

Observations:
1) As mentioned in other posts, there is a lot better team ball going on. The passing and ball movement was so refreshing to see. Not nearly as much selfishness as we've seen from teams in the last few years.
2) Still a lot of games left against better teams, but I like what I saw on defense. They play it. There's effort there. The Schroyer-effect is there. Hardnett played some lock-down defense on Illinois' best player. While Illinois certainly didn't shoot well in the 1st half, lets give our guys some credit on defense. I think we held Illinois to like 10 points within the first 15 min.
3) I think this is the deepest backcourt we've had in a while: Bryant, Hardnett, Haws, and Cannon. That's a legit squad at guard and I don't think we've ever had that deep of a bench of guard. This will bode well in the guard-heavy WCC. Hardnett has some legit handles and speed. I'd say the slowest out of those three is Haws.
4) While he's still developing, Childs is an upgrade over Mika. He's more explosive.
5) Bryant is a different player. Last year it seemed like every time he got the ball he tried to shoot it. I didn't see that tonight. He did a superb job feeding folks the ball. Nearly had a triple double.
6) Nixon, Worthington, Seljaas all held their own.
7) Weakness on this team will be our front court. Still, we have better options than the Chris Miles days.

This is the first team I've seen play actual defense since the 2010 team with Jackson Emery leading the defense. This team is better than the one last year. It may develop into a really good team this year with a lot of guys coming back next year.

I agree with most of your points except for #4. This is not a dig on Childs at all, but Mika was awesome. He improved a ton from his freshman to sophomore (and coming off a mission) season and had he come back I think we would have seen an even better Mika. I'm a huge Mika fan so you're just not going to convince me that sophomore Childs is better than junior Mika. But both are fun to watch. I love Childs as well.

The thing that has me excited about this team is that this is the first that I've felt I'm watching a BYU team play the way I think a BYU team should play since the Jimmer years.

I was really pleased with how strong the team started this game. I believe Illinois St. had 0 made 3 pointers in the first half which is amazing because they are a team that shoots and makes a lot of 3s. Some of it was just them being cold but we also played some great defense. Cannon did come back down to earth in this game, but I still enjoyed watching him play in person. He plays smartly and with a chip on his shoulder it seems. A good combination. I don't think he'll be scoring 17 points very often but I'm very glad to have him coming off the bench. I was very glad to see TJ finally hit some shots - let's see if he can continue this.

Illinois St. was ranked #104 by ESPN coming into the season and currently has an RPI rank of #95. Here is our PER against them:

ISU was 0-15 from 3 in the 1st.