Goodbye, Jimmer. Hello, Jimmer?

The NCAA Tournament didn’t end well, but it really only does for one team in the entire country.  While Jimmer and his Cougars lost in the Sweet Sixteen, a picture of a bruised, bandaged, and fatigued, but unbowed Fredette walking off the court may be the most iconic image of the tourmanent.

The big question is, where does Jimmer Fredette go from here?  Will he be a boom or a bust in the NBA?  How will his talent translate to the next level?  Will the Jazz draft him?  If not, where will he go?  Let’s take a look at these questions.

Will Jimmer Fredette be a boom or a bust in the NBA?

Some “experts” don’t think he has much of a chance in the NBA.  Here’s what those “experts” think:

Strengths:

Jimmer Fredette is a great shooter.  His range is more than sufficient for the NBA 3-point line, but he can also hit midrange jumpers and can penetrate the lane.  He can not only spot up and shoot off the dribble, but he can also hit shots that most players are told not to take.

Also, he is a natural leader.  He is a player who is equally adept at putting the entire game on his shoulders or involving his teammates, depending on what is working and what is needed.

In addition, Fredette is a very good passer.  He can pass well enough to be a point guard in the NBA, and can use the threat of his shot to open up other players for shots.

Weaknesses:

The main concern at the next level is Jimmer’s defense.  If he stayed and watched Butler beat Florida in the Elite Eight game, he would have noticed how everyone on Butler moved their feet on defense.  This is something that Jimmer needs to do more.  He is seen as having slow feet, and as a potential liability on defense.  He will have to improve in this department if he wants to start in the NBA.

His turnover rate is too high.  His adjusted turnover rate was 23rd highest in the NCAA, and his assist to turnover ratio was only 1.22.  These will need to improve, too.

Overall prospects:

According to the gurus, Jimmer Fredette is a mid to late-first rounder who will have to land on the right team.  He can be a solid player, but won’t dominate as he did in college.  In other words, they see him as a possible bust with an upside of being a solid player but not a star.

How will Jimmer’s talent translate to the next level?

To fully answer this question, we must first address the “elephant in the room.”  What is the elephant in the room?  Jimmer Fredette has different ethnicity than the stereotypical basketball player.  It’s unsettling that stereotypes still exist today, but the bottom line here is that even scouts who do this for a living fall prey to the “black men are natural athletes, white men can’t jump” mentality.

There’s really no way to sugarcoat this: recruiting gurus, who should know better, are using the “slow, white guy” stereotype in their assessment of Jimmer Fredette.  It’s subtle, and I’m not saying by any stretch of the imagination that it is intentional, but it is still there.  People in Utah are used to this because they saw John Stockton play possibly the best basketball in the country night after night, but never get full credit for just how good he was.

So, let’s pretend for a moment that everybody on the court is gray.  They are all generic players, with no cultural or racial differences: they are just players.  I don’t need to do this exercise myself, because I see all players as “cut from the same cloth,” but I will pretend.

When I see them as all gray, and I look at Fredette, I see a player who has the tools to make it at the next level.  I see a player who can shoot, pass, and drive.  I see a player who has the mental toughness to succeed at any level.  Do I see a player who isn’t a finished product yet?  Of course.  I see him as a player who needs to learn to move his feet on defense.  But do I see him as unable to learn to move his feet better?  No.

Will the Jazz draft Jimmer Fredette?

I think the Jazz will take Fredette if they get the chance to.  But there is a problem with that.  Every year we see a high-scoring player raked over the coals by scouting services, only to get taken as a high pick.  The Cavs have two lottery as do the Jazz.  Assuming that neither the Cavs’  nor the Jazz’ wins one of the top three slots,  the Cavs’ second pick will be before the Jazz second pick.  Will the Jazz use their top pick for Jimmer?

The Cavs are looking for star power.  They desperately need a “feel-good” pick to replace Lebron James.  Looking at the board for this year, there really isn’t anyone who is a guaranteed game-changer, even at #1.  Cavs’ owner Dan Gilbert is establishing a reputation as a very rich and very loose cannon who isn’t afraid to take a chance.

What does this mean?  I think the Jazz would take Jimmer Fredette in a heartbeat.  They know that Jimmer can play, and they know it would be great for the franchise to take a star who happened to play at BYU.

Goodbye or Hello?

“With the eighth selection in the 2011 NBA Draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers take Jimmer Fredette.”

Back to the Future, Starring Brandon Doman

As we all know, coach Bronco Mendenhall decided to shake up his coaching staff in the offseason.  Doman now gets to prove he was ready to be promoted.  He promises a return to “old school BYU football.”  The irony in this statement was that there was nothing old school about what is now called the West Coast Offense when being run by LaVell Edwards and, among others, Norm Chow.

The shootouts, year after year, especially in the Holiday Bowl are what most people think of when they hear “old school BYU.”  Visions of Steve Young, Ty Detmer, Gifford Neilson, and Jim McMahon dance in their heads.  A return to the “old school” mentality, at least, of attacking on offense and never letting the defense rest for a second, will be a welcome change.

But can the old West Coast Offense work anymore? Many will point to Norm Chow’s recent success as proof that it can, but Chow had players that USC cheated to get to campus, and had so much talent there that his second string offense was better than a lot of BCS teams’ first string.

Deposed OC Robert Anae ran the modern spread attack out of the shotgun.  Though it didn’t work out at BYU as well as expected, the spread is the way the game is going.   Spreading the field takes a lot of pressure off of the offense and puts it squarely on the defense.  But teams are beginning to “decode” the spread option a bit.

The future of college football is a hybrid offense. It will combine pro set principles while spreading the field.  In the NFL, and on college teams that use pro set attacks, this is known as the “two minute offense.”  It is no mistake that teams often score more when trying to come from behind in the closing minutes than they did the entire game up to then.

Teams play conservatively for most of the game and then spread the field out when they are desperate.  The run and shoot, which didn’t quite make it in the NFL despite turning the laughingstock Detroit Lions into a playoff team for a few years, was a great illustration that spreading the field opens up the offense.

The spread option was created by Rich Rodriguez, and is really the triple option run out of the run and shoot formation.  Urban Meyer (thankfully away from the U of U) won two national championships with it, and Auburn won one with a variant of it this year.  The problem is, you have to recruit a different kind of player for the spread option.

It only works with a very mobile quarterback, and it is preferred that you have a lot of “waterbug” types to play the slot.  In addition, most teams play it out of the shotgun, which means that players with NFL aspirations are leery of attending a spread school.

The solution to this is not, as some schools are trying, the pistol, but a hybrid approach.  The QB can line up behind center in a base offense with formations like two WR’s and two slots with one running back, or trips to one side and one WR on the other.

This is a great way to run the ball, because once you get through the line, the outside linebackers and safeties are busy covering wideouts and slots.  That usually leaves the RB one on one with the MLB.  The RB should win that race ten times out of ten in the open field.

Ironically enough, the old school BYU West Coast offense used a fair amount of three and four wideout formations.  The run was more of a change of pace, but they did it quite well.  And it looked idiosyncratic to the rest of the football world at the time.  Really, though, the West Coast Offense is very “tweakable” for adding spread principles.

So, what is my point here?  Simply that the old school BYU West Coast Offense could become a modern, pioneering offense with a few minor tweaks.  Across the college landscape, the spread is influencing the pro set, while spread coaches are putting pro set plays into their playbooks for goal line plays or situations where they want to run time off the clock.

By simply using the West Coast Offense playbook with more emphasis on three and four wideouts, and remembering to run the ball enough to keep the defense honest, Doman and the Cougars could become THE team with THE hot offense.  The idea seems so simple that nobody wants to do it, but running West Coast plays with 4 wideouts is a perfect answer to a lot of questions.

It ensures that dropback QB’s with NFL potential still want to play, and the OL can block using standard techniques.  Also, kids from pro set offenses won’t have nearly as steep of a learning curve as they did with the spread.  It’s more like the run and shoot than the spread option, but still more like the typical West Coast Offense.  Especially the West Coast Offense in the last two minutes.

How will the offense look this fall? The Cougars weren’t enough of a spread team to have a difficult adjustment back to West Coast principles.  Doman wants to return to West Coast principles.  He wants to attack.  Basically, it is all going to depend on how quick Jake Heaps and the receivers get their timing and reads down.

With Mississippi, Texas, and Utah right out of the gate, the Cougars can’t afford to take a lot of time learning the “new” offense.  This team is as likely to be 1-2 after three games as it is 2-1 (and as we fans always hope for…3-0???).  After these games, it should be smooth sailing until the road game at Oregon State and the hype game at Cowboys Stadium against TCU three weeks later.

I don’t expect a hybrid approach yet, but you never know what is going to happen when a talented coach starts tweaking.

Texas: The Next Frontier

 

When the late Ben Hogan was in his prime, he was in Canada for the Canadian Open. At the time, Canada’s best golfer was a young man named Moe Norman, who would later become the icon of Natural Golf. Norman was one of the purest ball-strikers in the history of the game, but unknown outside of Canada.

 

A Canadian told Hogan he had to watch Norman, and practically dragged him to the range where Norman was practicing. Hogan watched Norman hit a ball straight down the middle with his then-unorthodox swing, and Hogan turned to his friend and called the straight shot an accident. After Norman hit about a hundred more balls to within about 15 feet of where the first one landed, Hogan is said to have walked up to him, shook his hand, and said “keep hitting those accidents, kid.”

 

What does that have to do with BYU football? Everything. Because every time the Cougars beat a high-profile program, it is seen as an “accident” or a “fluke.” In the eyes of the fanbases of high-profile opponents, the Cougars never actually win, but it’s always because the other team had an “off day” or “bad luck.”

 

The move to independent status and the ESPN contract gives BYU a chance to change that perception. As mentioned last week, the Cougars now have a chance to be seen in the same light as Notre Dame instead of being just another team from a non-BCS conference.

 

The biggest opportunity in the upcoming season is Texas. You remember Texas? They are the team everybody wanted to join their conference last year. They are the team that got the Big 12 to allow them to have their own TV network independent of the conference. They are a team that could easily go independent itself in a few years. And they are ripe for a major upset.

 

Texas has a lot of problems. Coach Mack Brown will probably be mentioned on everyone’s “hot seat” list this year. Their offense has major personnel problems, and it starts at QB. Garrett Gilbert might have been a decent QB if Colt McCoy hadn’t been injured in the National Championship game against Alabama last year.

 

Instead, Gilbert had to play against Alabama after McCoy got hurt, and is still shell-shocked from the experience over a year later. Gilbert is being pressed for the starting job by sophomore Case McCoy. Yes, he’s the little brother of Colt McCoy. He only threw one pass last year, though.

 

Consequently, the depth chart for Texas at QB has Gilbert, who most hold responsible for Texas’ 5-7 year last year; McCoy, a sophomore who has thrown one pass in major college; and a couple of players most Longhorn fans hope never see playing time except in mop-up duty.

 

They don’t really have much of anyone who has proven themselves on offense coming back. They do have a lot of kids who were 4 and 5-star recruits who haven’t done much and are hungry to prove last year was an aberration, but there is no guarantee that an offense best described as “anemic” last year is going to be any better this year.

 

Defense, though, is another story. The Longhorns will probably be terrible on offense, but they have the potential to be a very good defense. Watch for Alex Okafor, a DE who had 5 sacks in the spring game.

 

All in all, the Texas game is a great opportunity for the Cougars to make a huge impression on a national stage. A victory would be huge for national perception. And, as many of us know, under the current system, national perception means a lot. BYU is taking a major step up in competition, and it may take a couple of years to fully adjust. But the adjustment may happen sooner than a lot of people think.

 

Outside of Provo, not many people expect the Cougars to do much next year. This may play to BYU’s advantage. If the national press continues to underrate them, players on other teams can’t help but do the same. Coaches work extremely hard to make sure their teams don’t underrate anyone, but the coaches don’t have the kids 24/7.

 

Sooner or later, those kids are going to turn on the TV, listen to some sports radio, or pick up a newspaper. And when they do that anywhere but Utah, they don’t see a lot of respect for the Cougars. Even the compliments are thinly-veiled insults sometimes. Because when outsiders look at BYU, they see a bunch of zero, two, and three-star recruits who appear “non-athletic.”

 

They don’t see a bunch of four and five star recruits, and a lot of assumptions are made. What they don’t understand, though, is that BYU requires certain qualities in their athletes that transcend star rankings in high school. Faith doesn’t know recruiting stars. And recruiting evaluators don’t understand how a team at a school like BYU becomes far more than the sum of its parts solely from everyone being on the same, elevated spiritual page.

 

Then there is the instant equalizer: the two year mission. The kids who go on missions come back with two more years of spiritual, mental, and physical maturity. Kids mature a lot in their first two or three years of college. The extra maturity gained by kids who go on missions more than compensates for one or two stars granted by recruiting “experts.”

 

BYU is taking a big step up in competition. How they are able to adjust will be the main determining factor in how far up the “food chain” they can go.

Can the Cougars beat Texas? Yes. But they could lose big too. For this year, though, Texas is probably the yardstick by which any improvement will be measured, both in the eyes of the coaches and the media. It is that important.

 

Right now, it’s too close to call.

Does BYU Have A Chance For A National Title?

The day is approaching: the Cougars will soon be playing an independent schedule in football, while joining the West Coast Conference for other sports.  This is a great move for the football team.

There are really two revenue sports in college: football and basketball.  Every thing else is supported by these two sports.  And football is by far the most lucrative of the two sports.  In addition, it gets exposure for the University.  The more the Cougars are on national television, the more exposure the University gets.

The Cougars need a conference to get them to the NCAA in basketball.  Any conference can do that because of the way the tournament works though.  What they need in addition, though, is a way to have a chance to play for the National Championship in football, too.  They just might have figured out a way this time.

When you are in a BCS conference, you now have to compete against a lot of very good teams and one or two great ones.  Then, if you make it through undefeated, you have a conference championship game.  Usually, you have to be undefeated or only have one loss to make it to the title game.

As we have seen with Boise State and TCU the last two years, going undefeated in a non-BCS conference is not enough to make the BCS Championship game.  Call it collusion, call it competition, or call it convoluted, but there was no way BYU was ever going to make the BCS Championship game from a non-BCS conference.

Even if they went undefeated, they wouldn’t have gotten into the big game because of BCS politics.  The BCS does not want to open up their championship game to smaller conferences.  However, because of the Notre Dame factor, it is very possible for an independent to get in.  In other words, winning a non-BCS conference title is actually an obstacle to ever getting into the BCS title game.

Enter the Cougars.  Being an independent and having a contract with ESPN is the best thing that could have happened to the BYU football team, and by extension, the University.  No discussion about being independent can begin without looking at the Notre Dame strategy.  Notre Dame hasn’t been able to close the deal on the field for years now, but it hasn’t been for lack of opportunity.

For years, Notre Dame had a formula that they used nearly every year.  They played three Big Ten teams every year (Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue), three service academies (Air Force, Navy, Army), the marquee game against USC, and they would round out their schedule with teams from smaller conferences that would win a lot of games and look good for the polls and the computers, but shouldn’t be a threat to beat a truly elite team.

This worked for Notre Dame until Lou Holtz left.  Holtz left because a book called “Under the Tarnished Dome” portrayed him as someone who didn’t care about his players and charged that Holtz wouldn’t even talk to or acknowledge the existence of injured players until they were well enough to get back onto the field.  This book severely affected recruiting, and Holtz left after a couple of years.  Notre Dame then made a lot of mistakes in hiring coaches, and hasn’t been the same since.

So, what does this mean to BYU?  Everything.  Notre Dame used to be ranked in the top ten most of the time by using their scheduling strategy.  The TV contract with NBC, to whom cynics have referred as the “Notre Dame Broadcasting Company” for years, ensured that Notre Dame would be on television almost every week.  BYU now has a chance to use the same strategy as an independent.

They have a contract with ESPN.  This will give the Cougars what amounts to the second-best TV deal for independent football, losing only to that of Notre Dame.  Having most of the Cougars’ games on national TV is a huge advantage, both in recruiting and in the polls.  It ensures that all of their games can be seen by most of the country.

Now, all they have to do is schedule well and take care of business on the field.  They need to play two or three marquee games, and play the rest against decent teams, with one or two “directional” schools thrown in.

This year, the Cougars play two marquee games, Texas and TCU, the rivalry game with Utah, dangerous Oregon State, very dangerous Ole Miss, a UCF team that should be decent this year, and a bunch of “usual suspects” that they should beat.  This is the kind of schedule that gets an elite team to the title game.

The upcoming schedule is a good start, but playing Notre Dame next year is better.  Because, really, instead of playing for the championship of a conference that gets no respect from the polls or the computers, BYU is now competing against Notre Dame for the title of “best independent program with a national TV contract.”  The BYU-Notre Dame game will be the measuring stick for both schools every year they play.

Starting next year, if the Cougars can get through their independent schedule with one loss, it should be enough to land them a BCS bowl berth.  And if they make it through undefeated, it could be enough to make the title game.  If there is a playoff of at least eight teams with six BCS conference champions and two at-large teams, the Cougars will have an even better chance of winning another National Championship.

Down the road, they will need to tweak the schedule a little bit.  They need their tougher games to be against teams from major conferences and Notre Dame.  The Utah rivlary has to stay, but right now, as far as the BCS is concerned, the Cougars have all to lose and nothing to gain by playing the likes of Boise State, Hawaii, or Utah State.  But that is a subject for another day.