Moving Along Nicely in the Post-Jimmer Era

When we last discussed the basketball team, there were a lot more questions than answers.  Let’s take a look at some of those questions.

Who is going to take over for Jimmer Fredette?

The obvious answer is that nobody on the team is another Jimmer Fredette.  Players of his caliber only come along once or twice in most teams’ histories.  When you take a deeper look, though, the answer is that everybody has to take over.  Everybody has to elevate their games, and a lot of teamwork is required. 

The Cougars have done a great job so far.  Four players are averaging double figures, and Brock Zylstra is chipping in with 9 ppg, with Stephen Rogers contributing 7.7 ppg.  We will have more to say about those in double figures later in this post.

I guess the best way to answer this question is that teamwork and defense are going to take over for Jimmer Fredette.  That is absolutely not a knock on last year’s team, either.  When you have a talent like Fredette, you have to let him shine.  Conversely, when a talent like Fredette leaves, it’s time for everybody to elevate their games and pick up the slack.  In basketball, as in football, the best way to do this is to pick it up on the defensive end. 

Should BYU even bother to show up this year?

Not if they had listened to the national press.  I doubt that many would have predicted the Cougars to even go .500 this year.  I wonder that those who predicted gloom and doom for the Cougars think now?  They aren’t getting much national TV time or publicity at this point, but the Cougar are 17-5 overall, and 6-2 in conference play.  In other words, the Cougars are playing a lot better than most national writers predicted them to, and the total collapse predicted by many just hasn’t happened.

We’ve all seen the pattern over and over.  For whatever reason, the Cougars are usually the last team to get any respect from the national press.  The football contract with ESPN has helped matters greatly, but the Cougars are still seen as an afterthought when upper-echelon teams are being discussed.  Only the stratospheric play of Jimmer Fredette got the Cougars any respect at all last year. 

Even so, most writers saw the Cougars as a one-man team, and at least one national sports personality found a way to predict them losing every game in the tournament before someone was finally right.  This year, Jerry Palm, who usually does a very good job at CBS, still has the Cougars as one of his last four teams to make it into the tournament. 

Palm usually gets a lot of his predictions right, especially toward the end of the season.  This is bothersome, because he apparently is brilliant at figuring out all of the politics that go into choosing the field.  Is a 17-5 BYU team really only deserving of a play-in game?  In the preseason coaches’ poll, the Cougars got exactly one vote as a top 25 team.  Even at 17-5, they only have one vote in this week’s poll. 

So, who has really stepped it up this season?

Noah Hartsock and Brandon Davies have been the top scorers this year, and both have contributed a lot of leadership, besides their points.  Hartsock not only scored twenty against Pepperdine, but blocked three shots.  Along the way, he became the 43^rd player in Cougar history to score over 1,000 points.  In the loss to Loyola-Marymount, Hartsock had a career-high 28 points. 

Davies could have sulked after last year.  He could have transferred.  He could have come in with a bad attitude.  Instead, he has worked his tail off.  Davies scored 29 against Pepperdine, with 15-18 shooting from the free throw line, and contributed two blocks. 

From the outside, Matt Carlino, Charles Abouo are both shooting .444, and have combined for 41 percent from outside of the three-point line.   Fifth starter Zylstra and sixth man Rogers have combined to shoot .483, and .409 from three-point range. 

As we alluded to at the beginning, defense is where the Cougars have really shined this year.  While we all like to see scoring, the other half of the game is to not let the opponent score.  The Cougars have allowed only 65.1 points per game this year, while scoring 80. 

CBS, in whatever metric they use, has the Cougars as the number twelve team in the country in total defense.  While they are ranked around 100 in points allowed, this doesn’t take a lot of things into consideration, such as competition or the pace of the game in your part of the country. 

We like the scoring margin stat, in which the Cougars are 14^th in the country right now with a 14.9 point margin.  Conference leader St Mary’s, who are having a monster season so far, are in sixth place with a 16.9 margin.  While the Cougars are in third place in the WCC right now, we see them as the second-best team in the league.  A victory over St Mary’s in the WCC tournament, though, could change everything. 

And this brings us to our next topic:

So, where is this team headed?

The next three games should tell a lot.  Virginia Tech is first.  On paper, they look OK, with a 12-7 record, but they have pretty much lost to everyone they’ve played who is any good, and fattened their record with tomato cans.  They play in the ACC, which is one of the two toughest conferences in college basketball, but they are beatable.  If the Cougars beat VT, it will certainly help the respect level in the national press.

The next two conference games, though, will tell a lot.  It is essential that the Cougars at least win one of the next two home games against St Mary’s and Gonzaga.  If they win both, it proves that the Cougars are as good as anyone in the league.  If they lose both, they are going to have to work hard to get into the NCAA draw.