Vs. USF

Looking forward to watching this game tonight.



What to watch for:



Elijah Bryant -- has only played in two games since November 23rd: at SMC and Pacific last week. Showed a few good signs against SMC at times. Played very well against Pacific, and much much better than we've seen from him the entire season. Does he play well tonight? If so, it's great news, and we can assume what the coaches and others close to the program like Steve Cleveland have been saying all along about him, was correct, which is that he was expected to be a key part of the success of the team this year.



Defense against USF's three point shooting -- USF has a good offense with good ball movement and excellent outside shooting. But they're still not as good as St. Mary's and don't have an inside threat like Landale. Their defense is not anywhere near as good as SMC's though. Because they don't have the same inside scoring threat our D should be able to "sell out" a little more to protect the three point line.

I am interested to see if Mika and Childs can stay under control while contesting 3's. They should be able to dominate on the other end.



And to see how Bryant follows up a good performance. Will he start chucking up shots? Or will he stay focused on getting good shots?

A 12-5 team vs an 11-6 team.

We won!



Mika with a career night. Emery carried the team in the first half. Got a little scary at the end but we held on.



SMC and Gonzaga play this weekend, so one of them is going to have a loss.

That was probably the 4th best team in the league by the end of the season. They've had the hardest schedule so far having to play Gonz, SMC and BYU already when some WCC teams haven't played any of the top 3 yet.

USF is a good team. BYU controlled the game for the most part. I am still encouraged, this young BYU team seems to keep improving game to game. Mika is a beast and Childs is really starting to look good. Haws is still streaky but sets up his team mates really well at times. Still a lot of room for improvement, but they keep improving.

Solid game by Bryant again: 4/7 from the field, 14 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists and he played some good defense.

BlueK wrote:
Solid game by Bryant again: 4/7 from the field, 14 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists and he played some good defense.

He did. He played much more in control. We'll need that from him.

Except for that one charge and almost got another one.

The minute totals this game are telling:



32 minutes played for Mika, Haws, Emery and Childs. 33 minutes played for Bryant. Rose played 24. No one else played more than 5 minutes. Also Haws-Emery-Bryant-Childs-Mika played most of the last 4 minutes of the game. We know who Coach thinks his 5 best players are.



Mika really struggled in the 1st half with turnovers and missing shots. It seemed to me that we shifted the offensive focus away from Mika and he found better shots in the normal flow of the offense in the 2nd half.



Emery was awesome last night and he really kept us in the game in the first half.



Bryant had another good game. He had 14 pts, 3 asts with only 1 turnover. I hope to see another consistent effort against San Diego.