Princeton Game

http://www.espn.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/116360/picking-every-game-in-the-college-hoops-tip-off-marathon



ESPN is picking BYU to win 85-84 in OT!

Tight game thus far. Impressed with both teams.

up 41-31

Why is Bryant starting the second half? And can he stop shooting please? I'm just waiting for Haws to take off.

Great way to start the season. I'll take a 9 point win any day.

Well we pulled it out.



Mika dominated this game on the boards and he went 11-12 from the FT line. He was our best player.



Haws is just a different level with his offensive skill level. His defense needs work but man he has pretty complete offensive game.



Emery is still a better version of himself when compared to last year. He is smarter about when to drive the ball. He missed all of his crazy 3's this game. Maybe next year he will learn to knock those shots off.



Rose seem to hesitate to take shots but he seems to have fairly good offensive game. I hope he looks to drive more next game. He also took the toughest defensive assignment.



Davis did a few things right tonight and mostly fouled a lot. He looked a lot better at Center when Mika was out.



Bryant had a few nice drives and offensive moves but doesn't seem to know how to fit into an offense. Defensively his size and strength really help as he can easily switch to guard almost every position.



Because of Davis' foul trouble Childs got a lot of minute. His mobility on D helped a lot but he had some bad rotations. On offensive he knows to be a garbage man. I hope with some more game experience he will look even better.



Beo had a brief cameo in the 1st half and didn't do a lot.



And that was it- a seven man rotation.



We could have used 10 minutes from Kaufusi this game. His size and athletic ability would have helped us put the game away.

I mostly agree with qman's assessment. All in all the Cougar's looked great with a few rough patches here and there, but you'll see that in every game.



I'm excited for the year, I thought the Cougar's played to the level of talent on the team and won a nice matchup against a good team.

Here are the PER ratings from the game:


Princeton.PNG

Obviously, Mika was a beast! The one thing I would like to see is more assists. Especially from Bryant and Rose.

Rose doesn't usually tighten the rotation this much this early. It shows how important this game was. Nice win. You'll see a lot more players get time in the next few games.

BlueK wrote:
Rose doesn't usually tighten the rotation this much this early. It shows how important this game was. Nice win. You'll see a lot more players get time in the next few games.

I agree. I am very pleased with what Rose did with the line up. We got through this game, and now we have a couple more games this week and can get some more players out there, but this game needed the tight rotation and the best players.

A few are commenting about Princeton missing open shots last night. That was true, but one thing to consider there is that they seemed to try to work really hard on defense. Our offense wore them out which usually means tired legs. And tired legs leads to missing outside shots. BYU's defense was ok. Statistically it was actually good. KenPom raised BYU's defense ranking after last night to 57 after opening us at 69. Theoretically maybe it had some holes in it, but but you also have to analyze a game in its whole. Our offense had a lot to do with wearing out Princeton's offense because of how hard we made a normally good defense of theirs have to work.



Also, compare the opening game last night with the one last year against LBSU. No comparison. BYU was way better last night than in that first game last year. That bodes well. In general Princeton is also a better team than LBS was, although not as quick or athletic.



I think this is a game last year's team would have lost.

Yes, the team looked much better in this year's opener. I was a little concerned about defense based on the preseason games, but the tight rotation proved that a core team can play adequate defense.

If Mika is consistent on that 10-ft jumper and his hitting his FTs like last night, teams are in real trouble.

hawkwing wrote:
Yes, the team looked much better in this year's opener. I was a little concerned about defense based on the preseason games, but the tight rotation proved that a core team can play adequate defense.

Going into the season I was hopeful that Mika had learned to foul less and that Childs would be the mobile 4 we never had. With those two on the floor we are a quick team defensively.



The big question marks were what would Rose and Bryant give us. Rose showed savvy and athletic tools. Bryant mostly just showed some athletic tools. I hope the BBIQ will come quickly.

I didn't catch game. Only saw highlights. Am I correct in my observation that Princeton got some good open looks from behind the arc. The seemed to drive a lot, which would explain us collapsing.

To me the biggest question is whether Mika hits a post-mission wall during conference play or not.



Luckily we get Kaufusi back for conference to provide an extra big body (and some extra extra-hard fouls on Karnowski) to spell Mika a bit more.

Gunk wrote:
I didn't catch game. Only saw highlights. Am I correct in my observation that Princeton got some good open looks from behind the arc. The seemed to drive a lot, which would explain us collapsing.

Part of that was BYU's strategy. They run the "Princeton" offense which means what they really want to do is trick the defense into allowing backdoor cuts and layups. To close that off it's hard not to allow some open looks from three. You'd rather give that up over the easier shot.

BlueK wrote:

I didn't catch game. Only saw highlights. Am I correct in my observation that Princeton got some good open looks from behind the arc. The seemed to drive a lot, which would explain us collapsing.

Part of that was BYU's strategy. They run the "Princeton" offense which means what they really want to do is trick the defense into allowing backdoor cuts and layups. To close that off it's hard not to allow some open looks from three. You'd rather give that up over the easier shot.

We were also somewhat fortunate that Princeton did not really hit a high % of 3s like teams seem prone to do against our perimeter defense. Overall, I thought the team looks pretty dang good. Hard not to be excited to watch the team gel and improve together.