Vs Colorado

Well we pulled it out with a gutsy defensive and rebounding effort. Coach Rose opted for a NCAA tournament style rotation with a seven man rotation of Emery, Haws, Rose, Childs, Mika, Davis and surprisingly Beo.



Emery decided to repeat some his terrible shot selection. He made a few big shots but he missed some terrible ones.



Haws got wild trying to throw alley-oops. But other than those 5 to's he was very efficient. He also had the primary responsibility on White CU's best scorer and did a good job keeping him out of the paint. He also helped out on the boards with 5 defensive rebounds.



Heard Mika was battle the flu and it showed in some easy ones his missed. He still got to the foul line and made several. But he also had 5 TO's.



Davis looked too slow to guard which is why Childs had to play 34 minutes.



Childs started the game aggressively around the hoop and dominated the boards. CU couldn't matchup with him and Mika.



Rose was basically ignored on offense by CU's D.



So Beo got throw into the fire and gave us some great minutes with 3pts, 4 rebs, 2 asts and 2 steals. His calm against CU's pressure D also reduced the TO's from Haws and Emery. I wonder if he will start eating into Rose's minutes.



But the key was a switching man defense that sagged into the paint. It took advantage of Childs' and Mika's ability to switch onto the perimeter. It also meant the weakside guard usually Rose or Beo and to battle for rebounding position against a big.



Davis looked too slow.



Leifson still can't handle ball pressure.



Guinn played a few minutes without his mask but CU's D was requiring our 3rd guard to make decisions with the ball. So Guinn got pulled.



Shaw and Aytes played spot minutes and were out classed.

When Colorado took the lead in the 2nd half, I thought- Oh boy, another loss where we had a 10+ point lead! But they battled back. They created a bunch of turnovers and hit the shots they needed to.



Mika's free throw shooting is such a breath of fresh air.



It was good to see a few more 3 pointers go down.

billbillbillbill wrote:
When Colorado took the lead in the 2nd half, I thought- Oh boy, another loss where we had a 10+ point lead! But they battled back. They created a bunch of turnovers and hit the shots they needed to.



Mika's free throw shooting is such a breath of fresh air.



It was good to see a few more 3 pointers go down.

My thoughts exactly.



I want to know how Mika went about improving his free throw shooting to this degree. Was it totally reps? Was there some magic coach? It is totally astonishing. The season would have already been significantly affected if he had come back shooting the same poor % of free throws as before his mission...but...if he was able to do this, why have we had so many players come through the program that could not significantly improve their ft %--at least to this level of improvement?

Other players have improved their free throw shooting, like Brandon Davies. Improving from very poor to excellent is rare and would be very rare on any team.

BlueK wrote:
Other players have improved their free throw shooting, like Brandon Davies. Improving from very poor to excellent is rare and would be very rare on any team.

Yeah, Davies did improve, but honestly, after seeing so many players only able to bump their numbers a bit, I never thought I'd see this kind of improvement from a kid coming off a mission. Honestly I'd like to hear what he said helped. Did something that he was shown just click and you have to be a super-stud player to be able to do that? It is just one of the most significant improvements I've seen in such a short opportunity of time.

I hope Beo gets more minutes. I just moved to his home turf the other year and word on the street is the kid can drain it. Apparently, he pretty much gave every recruiter the stiff arm because he only wanted to play at BYU. Recruiters from other schools just didn't even bother.

EM_Puma wrote:

Other players have improved their free throw shooting, like Brandon Davies. Improving from very poor to excellent is rare and would be very rare on any team.

Yeah, Davies did improve, but honestly, after seeing so many players only able to bump their numbers a bit, I never thought I'd see this kind of improvement from a kid coming off a mission. Honestly I'd like to hear what he said helped. Did something that he was shown just click and you have to be a super-stud player to be able to do that? It is just one of the most significant improvements I've seen in such a short opportunity of time.

Collinsworth recently made a similar improvement from one year to the next. Free throw shooting is so much about repetition, there is no excuse for any serious player to shoot under 70%

BYULV wrote:

BlueK wrote:
Other players have improved their free throw shooting, like Brandon Davies. Improving from very poor to excellent is rare and would be very rare on any team.

Yeah, Davies did improve, but honestly, after seeing so many players only able to bump their numbers a bit, I never thought I'd see this kind of improvement from a kid coming off a mission. Honestly I'd like to hear what he said helped. Did something that he was shown just click and you have to be a super-stud player to be able to do that? It is just one of the most significant improvements I've seen in such a short opportunity of time.

Collinsworth recently made a similar improvement from one year to the next. Free throw shooting is so much about repetition, there is no excuse for any serious player to shoot under 70%

Maybe he spent his P-days at the foul line? ;)

Here is the game PER:
Colorado.PNG

Nice to see Mika get 6 assists, but he also had 5 TOs. As a team we had 17 Ast to 16 TOs which needs to improve. I don't really care if Rose gets a lot of points, but I'd like to see him be more aggressive driving and getting assists. Still, he had 3-1 which is good. Colorado is a decent team and this is our best win yet even though they only have an RPI of 102.



And the season PER:
BYU 2016-12-13.PNG

This was by far our best game yet.



Mika was sick and couldn't finish his shots, but he drew a ton of fouls and was nails from the line.



With Davis still struggling with a bum knee, Childs played a lot of great minutes. Good shooting from the floor, but needs to stay late shooting frees.



Rose had another poor game offensively, but Emery and Haws stepped up in a big way. Not only did the team shoot around 50% deep, but both Emery and HAWS were frequently seen playing tough defense!!



And with Bryant still out, Beo had his best game since the preseason.



This team can play selfish, bad basketball, but as they gain experience as A TEAM they can play really good too.

Mars wrote:
This was by far our best game yet.





This team can play selfish, bad basketball, but as they gain experience as A TEAM they can play really good too.

This aspect has been improving since the Weber State game. With so many new pieces to this team it seems reasonable that it was going to take some time for them to figure out how to play together. The word "selfish" to me has some I think unnecessarily negative connotations. There is a difference in my mind between classic Stephon Marbury type selfishness (I don't even want to be on this team if I can't take the most shots and make the most money) vs. players taking on too much and not playing in sync because they haven't figured out their place and role yet. The decisions on the court during the heat of the game may sometimes look similar with the intent being completely different. I don't think the personalities on this team ever wanted to play selfish or bad basketball. Fans get impatient. Some among us had very high expectations from the beginning that maybe weren't that fair. Others had super low expectations that the team is still going to exceed.



An example: Broncobot saying we could have as many as 6-9 losses pre conference. That's not going to happen. But he was right about the growing pains early on. I think we haven't seen anywhere near the ceiling with this team yet and there are some fun days ahead this season and beyond.

Bryant was clearly only looking for his on shot each and every time he got in the game. He definitely played selfish. Maybe you make the case that the others just played out of sync. Maybe. But Bryant definitely selfish. Won't convince me otherwise. I'm sure he's sitting on the bench because he's "hurt" though.

Emery walks that line at times with his shot selection, imo. But he works hard on the defensive end.

byufan4ever wrote:
Bryant was clearly only looking for his on shot each and every time he got in the game. He definitely played selfish. Maybe you make the case that the others just played out of sync. Maybe. But Bryant definitely selfish. Won't convince me otherwise. I'm sure he's sitting on the bench because he's "hurt" though.

Well, he did have knee surgery. He hasn't played in the last five in a row, so wasn't a factor this year for very long anyway.