BYU Basketball Midterm Report Card

As Quinn said, I’m Mike Rose. I’m originally from Houston, where growing up in the city I was the only white boy playing ball among a band of brothas...but anyways, I live in Las Vegas now with my wife and will have a son in two months... I look forward to some good and spirited discussion as the Cougs go down the stretch to a hopefully successful year.

Anyways, there’s a lot to catch up on, so I’m going to dive in. I want to post about what the team has done so far, then in later posts we will get more into where we are headed, as well as an individual report card for each player, so look for that soon.

I’d love to read any questions or comments with your thoughts. Quinn assured me that we’ve got some down-to-earth and informed posters on the site, and not the guys who think BYU football should win the national title every year because we’re God’s team...I can’t deal with that.

Overall grade: B+

We’re 13-2 overall, which is great, but really 3-2 in games that matter (Boise State, Utah State, at Tulsa, Wake Forest, ASU). We missed amazing opportunities at ASU and then to host Wake Forest in the Marriott Center, and those two losses could come back to bite us come Selection Sunday.

Utah State was a good win, Boise a pretty good win, with an amazing second half (we outscored them like 50-2), and at Tulsa was a really good win against a big athletic team who had won 28 straight at home.

I’d even throw in the Idaho State win as a good win because that was the biggest game they’ll play, and we handled them at their place. (That coach was hot—did you see him cursing my uncle?)

We’ve really only played eight bad minutes of basketball this season in my opinion (slight exaggeration, but you get it), but unfortunately they were the last five minutes of the ASU game and the last three minutes against Wake Forest.

That’s where we need to have a go-to guy. We need to get Lee Cummard in the post or Jimmer Fredette off the pick and roll. No Jonathan Tavernari fadeaway three-pointers...although he had a great look when it was 84-84 with about two minutes that could’ve turned the game for us. I don’t mind those shots, but the next one with like a minute left was a terrible, forced shot.

All in all though, this is a fun team to watch, and we have some real talent. (They really miss that redheaded shooter off the bench though, don’t they—jk.)

Offense: A

The team really shares the ball well. We shoot a high percentage, we’re taking good shots, and a lot of our scores are the result of an assist...this is always the case when we have winning teams because we don’t dribble into a lot of shots. We try to drive to create a good look for another guy, because most guys we recruit can stroke.

Chris Miles is doing a great job passing out of the low block. You’ll notice when the ball goes in, it usually comes out to a guy who’s in a good position to shoot or drive to the basket. This is another key component to the offense, inside-out passing; we work hard on this every day.

A lot of teams throw it into the post knowing it’s a black hole and not coming out...and when I first started playing with Chris he was a black hole, but he has really improved on not taking forced hook shots. The kid is crazy though, I’m telling you.

Offensive studs have been Jimmer and JT (Tavernari). Lee (Cummard) rounds out the “Big Three,″ and it amazes me how he floats around and gets his points somehow, but you never really know how or where he’s going to score and can be tough to plan on for big games. When I used to guard him, my real work started when the ball went up trying to keep him off the offensive boards.

Don’t get me wrong—he’s done a great job and can really shoot the three and 15-foot pull-up. One thing about Lee that is both good and bad is he’s not going to force it—he lets the game come to him. Lee is most productive in the post; we need to get him catches there more often!

We will talk more about the love-hate relationship with JT and the emergence of Jimmer in individual report cards later this week...

Defense: B

We had to play a lot of zone defense against ASU and Wake because we couldn’t guard without fouling. Dave (Rose) hates to play zone! He knows when we go to it we have a hard time rebounding because it’s difficult to box out, and they will usually get an semi-open three that we just have to hope they miss. It’s harder to control the possession and the type of shot they will get in zone.

In zone we need to do a better job contesting shots and then blocking out to go get the rebound. That’s always our struggle in zone (see the Xavier game, where we had to play zone and they out-rebounded us).

I love Coach Wardenburg (second assistant coach), but he struggles teaching this defense. I always wanted to bring my high school coach from Texas into practice; he’s one of the great coaches of this matchup zone defense. (Long/short slide anyone?) Another guy we could bring in is the ASU coach—they run a nice 1-3-1.

When we’ve been able to play man-to-man defense, we’ve been good. We have good athletes in Emery, Morgan, Cummard, Abuo, and Miles who can really lock-up. We really get a lot of steals this year. Though they are not great defenders, Fredette and JT get their hands on a lot of balls, as do Jackson Emery and Cummard.

Jackson Emery is a great defensive player, but asking him to guard James Harden (ASU) and Jeff Teague (Wake Forest)—no one can guard those guys...I am convinced that we have played the two best offensive players in the country in these two guys. (Did you see Teague go for 30 against UNC last night? Incredible!)

This fact, however, doesn’t justify some of those foul calls on Harden down the stretch. They really missed some calls where he was untouched and they whistled, or charged right through our guy for a no-call!

Individual report cards to come...go Cougs.