Why BYU will win in the NCAA tourney:

[dank80]

I think they'll win a game. They should get at least a five seed and be matched up with a 12 or worse. I also think that they don't usually show their best for big games, but a 5-12 matchup should be extremely winnable.

[BYUROCKS]

We will win, because Rose will Start Davies, over Choke Miles.

OK, enough of the Miles crap. It's a team game and Miles was respectable today. The TEAM lost, Miles didn't do anything that "lost" us the game.

1/5 and only 2 Reb? that is not respectable.

Sorry, but stats don't tell the whole story. I wish Miles had played the last 5 minutes. Hartsock got burned a couple of times, but no one is putting him down. I'm not either. Everyone could have played a little better except Loyd. BYU should have won that game and props to them for being in the game with all the missed shots and mistakes they made. Much happier with that game than the UNLV debacle.

Ya, if all our guys even played half as well as Loyd, we would have won by 10+ points.

[FurriousCougar]

We just played the #13 team in the nation without our star player, and without a sub for our replacement point guard, and only lost by two.

If Jimmer plays, we advance easily--we won't be playing a New Mexico caliber team in the first round.

I agree, but did anyone else feel that we didn't miss Jimmer too much this game. Loyd had UNM searching for answers. BYU certainly was a different team with a healthy loyd vs a sick jimmer.

Yeah, for the second half perhaps no Jimmer washes out with a great Lloyd performance.

Doesn't change that we had an entire first half with no good performance, which would have changed the whole game.

Also doesn't change the fact that Lloyd had no replacement. Which by the way, was HUGE. If you (not specifically you declo, I mean anyone) don't think so, think again. Lloyd is 8/9 and we don't have him drive to the hoop on the last few possessions? He was tired, that's why. If we had a replacement for Lloyd he has wind at the end of the game to make those plays.

[BroncoBot]

We just played the #13 team in the nation without our star player, and without a sub for our replacement point guard, and only lost by two.

If Jimmer plays, we advance easily--we won't be playing a New Mexico caliber team in the first round.

I agree, but did anyone else feel that we didn't miss Jimmer too much this game. Loyd had UNM searching for answers. BYU certainly was a different team with a healthy loyd vs a sick jimmer.

Yeah, for the second half perhaps no Jimmer washes out with a great Lloyd performance.

Doesn't change that we had an entire first half with no good performance, which would have changed the whole game.

Also doesn't change the fact that Lloyd had no replacement. Which by the way, was HUGE. If you (not specifically you declo, I mean anyone) don't think so, think again. Lloyd is 8/9 and we don't have him drive to the hoop on the last few possessions? He was tired, that's why. If we had a replacement for Lloyd he has wind at the end of the game to make those plays.

You could be 100% right. If Jimmer was that sick in the first he should have pulled himself. That's hard, but it was obvious he wasn't getting the job done. That fact that he tried to play through it could have cost us the game.

[bigbluepuma]

I think he only played 12 minutes.

[Gunk]

Nothing has convinced me yet this season that BYU will win an NCAA tourney game. We still struggle getting up for the big games (we played way timid the 1st), have literally no inside presence on offense and defense and stink at rebounding against athletic teams.

Only way I am convinced we'll win an NCAA tourney game is if we happen to play a team that also has no inside presence.

No inside presence or no perimeter defense. perimeter D is what has killed BYU vs UNLV and UNM. I'm becoming more and more convinced that this is why BYU looks timid. If they aren't getting their perimeter shots, they aren't sure what to do and UNLV and UNM capitalized.

Exactly. All a team has to do is pressure our guards and we're at a loss. Haws, JT, Emery and even Jimmer on occasion get frantic, force shots and don't move the ball around. The logical answer would be to pound the ball inside, force the defense to collapse on the middle, opening up the perimeter, but for some reason this escapes Rose and our guys. They are so stuck in playing "their" game that it's to their detriment.

[BroncoBot]

I thought our bigs were doing a pretty good job the few times they actually touched the ball. It's eventually going to hurt BYU that when they play poor teams they don't use it as a growing experience for the team to
1. work on entry passes
2. work on away from the ball movement (especially on the baseline as this is where abouo would be a freak and Haws/Hartsock/JT could get a lot of points).

[Mars]

I think he only played 12 minutes.

Jimmer played 16 minutes. And yes, BYU looked much better with Loyd in the 2nd half (outscores UNM by 8) than we did with Jimmer in the first half and two minutes into the 2nd (outscored by UNM by 10).

So, it makes you wonder if Jimmer was healthy how much we would have won by, and if Jimmer didn't play at all if we would have won (I think so).

Missing Lamont made things tougher.