BYU Basketball 24-25-Bring out the Jelly!

[Pelado]

I, too, would really like to see Catchings driving to the basket instead of just launching 3s.

[Omaha 680]

FTs and 3 point D. Gotta clean that up. Finding a good rotation for B12

It's nice when you can be shooting 35% from the field and 60% from the FT line and the other team is shooting over 60% FG including over 60% from 3 and you still push to a relatively easy 25-point win. Agreed we need to clean it up as our Big 12 opponents probably aren't going to allow us to create eleventy billion turnovers and blocks to make up for poor shooting and poor 3 pt defense.

[byufan4ever]

https://www.deseret.com/sports/2024/...-fouss-traore/

BYU women’s basketball has signed Fouss Traore’s sister

Foos' 6-3 sister Mariam will be playing for BYU!

[Jeff Lebowski]

6-3. Wow.

[byufan4ever]

BYU men's basketball wins big over the worst D1 team in the country. Hall and Stewart made their first appearances of the season. Hall and Demin started and played together and while the competition was easy, I thought they played well together. With both on the court together the ball movement was great. Hall had just one fewer assist than Demin, but he did have two fewer TOs. Even though Stewart didn't do much on the stat sheet, I liked his energy. He almost had a put back dunk! I imagine this means that Crawford's minutes are going to be hard to come by. With no Keiba, Boskovic played some 5. And he had an awesome dunk! If he can put it all together, he's going to be amazing! I also want to note that I really liked how Catchings played. He passed up 3P shots multiple times to drive to the hoop and I love it!

Player of the Game goes to Egor Demin (3rd time). He did a little bit of everything. He was an efficient scorer, as his 100% TS% shows, although I imagine he could have been more aggressive and scored a bit more if he really wanted to this game. GSc liked Traore better and it's hard to go wrong when someone has a double-double. At times I thought his defense was a little subpar tonight, but when we hold the opposition to 43 points, it's hard to complain. I didn't get the DRtg scores tonight and while I don't put a lot of faith into them, I would be interested to know how they ranked Foos' points allowed.

Struggled to Perform goes to Richie Saunders (2nd time). He didn't exactly have a horrible game, but he was the worst out of everyone with 15+ minutes. He had the lowest TS%, but even a 50% mark for True Shooting is not bad really. It's just that against the worst team in D1, Richie probably could have had his way, it looked like he was conserving his energy or something. It seems like we either get crazy Richie that can't be stopped or I would rather not be here Richie. Let's hope next week we get the better Richie two days in a row!


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BYU is now 5-0 and #25 in Kenpom and Missippi Valley State is #364 making this an obvious quad 4 game. Up next is Ole Miss who is 5-0 and #48 in Kenpom. At a neutral site this will currently make them a Q1 game. We need this badly for a resume builder. To be honest, Q4 wins mean nothing come tournament time. IMO, they are "empty" wins.

Here is the new PER summary for the season. Just the one game this week. The top 3 did not change at all.

PER Summary 2024-11-23.png

[BlueK]

BYU is now 5-0 and #25 in Kenpom and Missippi Valley State is #364 making this an obvious quad 4 game. Up next is Ole Miss who is 5-0 and #48 in Kenpom. At a neutral site this will currently make them a Q1 game. We need this badly for a resume builder. To be honest, Q4 wins mean nothing come tournament time. IMO,

Just one comment on your selection criteria comment here. Correct that q4 wins don't mean anything. However I would also say our situation isn't the same as it was as a member of the WCC. We won't have any shortage of q1 games, so needing these in San Diego badly is a bit overstated. The committee does care about how power conference teams schedule outside of their league if you're on the bubble, but a good pre-conference tournament and a couple of other decent games meets that. BYU has that. You just can't lose all of them and then perform badly in your conference.

[byufan4ever]

Just one comment on your selection criteria comment here. Correct that q4 wins don't mean anything. However I would also say our situation isn't the same as it was as a member of the WCC. We won't have any shortage of q1 games, so needing these in San Diego badly is a bit overstated. The committee does care about how power conference teams schedule outside of their league if you're on the bubble, but a good pre-conference tournament and a couple of other decent games meets that. BYU has that. You just can't lose all of them and then perform badly in your conference.

Look at Duke, Kentucky, Kansas. They're playing a number of Q1/2 games in their OOC and they still have a very strong conference schedule as well. I get having a few cupcakes for a warmup and I'm not saying we need to go crazy playing all blue bloods, but I would like to see a few Q2/3 games in the beginning of the season.If anything that will help prepare us for the B12 gauntlet more than going from the night and day difference that our OOC and conference schedule currently is.

[byufan4ever]

Also, just for the sake of argument, a Q4 win does you nothing while a Q4 loss is devasting for your tournament resume. Once could say that it really isn't worth it scheduling Q4 games. It's only good for the people who like to have "20 win seasons" and don't care about the qaulity of those wins. I'd dare say scheduling a Q1 game and potentially getting a loss is better than sceduling a Q4 and potentialy getting a loss there. A Q1 loss is better than a Q4 win. The tournament committee will not harm you for losing a Q1 game. There's just no benefit to playing a Q4 game.

[Bo Diddley]

Also, just for the sake of argument, a Q4 win does you nothing while a Q4 loss is devasting for your tournament resume. Once could say that it really isn't worth it scheduling Q4 games. It's only good for the people who like to have "20 win seasons" and don't care about the qaulity of those wins. I'd dare say scheduling a Q1 game and potentially getting a loss is better than sceduling a Q4 and potentialy getting a loss there. A Q1 loss is better than a Q4 win. The tournament committee will not harm you for losing a Q1 game. There's just no benefit to playing a Q4 game.

Totally agree with this.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I can't wait for some real games. These cupcakes are no fun to play.

[SteelBlue]

I can't wait for some real games. These cupcakes are no fun to play.

it’s wild how much performance in these games gets hyped, too. Egor’s draft stock has supposedly risen because of these cupcake games? Why?

[BigFatMeanie]

I agree with the sentiment that BYU should try to schedule more than just cupcakes.

One challenge to doing so is the reluctance of Q1 teams to come to the Marriott center in the pre-season, even as part of a home and home series.

[BlueK]

Also, just for the sake of argument, a Q4 win does you nothing while a Q4 loss is devasting for your tournament resume. Once could say that it really isn't worth it scheduling Q4 games. It's only good for the people who like to have "20 win seasons" and don't care about the qaulity of those wins. I'd dare say scheduling a Q1 game and potentially getting a loss is better than sceduling a Q4 and potentialy getting a loss there. A Q1 loss is better than a Q4 win. The tournament committee will not harm you for losing a Q1 game. There's just no benefit to playing a Q4 game.

I would also prefer to see a better non- conference schedule. But in context, we're basically seeing year two of the Mark Pope transition into the Big 12 scheduling strategy. There wasn't enough time I don't think for Kevin Young to craft his version of what the right schedule is going to be. We'll see what that turns out to be. In basketball it's the coach who does the schedule. I suspect they just kept in place the framework Pope would have already had for this year.

Also, believe me, I totally get what the quadrants and selection criteria are about as I have closely followed the basketball selection process for at least a couple of decades. I want a more interesting non conference schedule too and am not fond of the cupcake games either. I typically won't even watch the annual football FCS game for example. I thought it was dumb that they added the 12th football game only for BYU to use it to play an FCS team. In basketball yes, it's also kind of dumb to have too many of those kinds of games.

But just from watching last season and how our numbers in the end worked out, it doesn't need to be the same level of angst as coming from the WCC where you only had maybe 4 or 5 q2 and q1 games to help you come March. I hope KY revises the philosophy with scheduling. I bet he will. But don't worry too much about the ncaa tournament. Last year showed that as long as we take care of business at home and pick off a few more that the conference schedule will put us in a good position. It's the benefit of being in the best basketball conference. Not a single conference game is going to be q4. At least it wasn't last year, and I would expect the same. And barely any will even be q3.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I am not worried about our overall SOS. I am just bored with these easy games.

[SteelBlue]

39:15 Egor talks about his goals for this season. I think you'll enjoy what he has to say.

As for the rest of the interview, it is long for what it delivers but when they let him talk, he has some interesting things to say. There's one part where they ask him if he'd rather play in Russia or the US and he answers Russia and they kind of freak out and he gets very serious and almost angry and says something like "if I don't say Russia I don't ever play on that national team. It's Russia." (21:03)