Originally Posted by UteStar (Post 62026)

jay...nice to see the honesty, but you are dead wrong about him being overrated and about not being a difference maker. If you barely remember him, it is hard to talk about him.

As I said before, he is a guy that guarded the oppositions best player (guard or forward). He was great at defense because he stayed in front of his players. Short guys could not shoot over him and struggled to ever get around him...tall guys struggled to get in a position to score over him. He was also clutch down the stretch (game winning shots including an absolutely amazing final couple of minutes against Air Force at Air Force during his senior year). In terms of not letting his team lose, I would put Alex second behind Andre Miller. I would put him ahead of Van Horn (who hit a bunch of last second clutch shots), Bogut, Hanno and Doleac.

Jensen really did it all. Right now, Cummard is nowhere near the player that Alex was. With that said, maybe he will be in the next year or two. He definately shows traits that make him invaluable. It will be interesting to see how he turns out.

Originally Posted by mpfunk (Post 61996)

Here is my point on the Alex Jensen v. Cummard comparison

I think Jensen was the better player as sophomore. I also think that Jensen's stats severely suffered as a sophomore, because he was very out of shape from his mission (something that Cummard is not dealing with) and he simply was not needed to score or rebound that much on that team. The scoring was handled by Andre Miller, Doleac, and Mottola. Even Drew Hansen was more important offensively.

Where Jensen wins this battle is in defense. Utah was simply the better defensive team, and IMO it was largely a great defensive team because of Jensen.

In addition you cannot separate team results from all this comparison. Jensen was the key lock down defender in the Utes victories against UNC and Arizona. If you want Ute players in order of importance to the 1998 NCAA Championship game run it goes: Andre Miller, Alex Jensen, and Mike Doleac.

Originally Posted by UteStar (Post 62026)

jay...nice to see the honesty, but you are dead wrong about him being overrated and about not being a difference maker. If you barely remember him, it is hard to talk about him.

As I said before, he is a guy that guarded the oppositions best player (guard or forward). He was great at defense because he stayed in front of his players. Short guys could not shoot over him and struggled to ever get around him...tall guys struggled to get in a position to score over him. He was also clutch down the stretch (game winning shots including an absolutely amazing final couple of minutes against Air Force at Air Force during his senior year). In terms of not letting his team lose, I would put Alex second behind Andre Miller. I would put him ahead of Van Horn (who hit a bunch of last second clutch shots), Bogut, Hanno and Doleac.

Jensen really did it all. Right now, Cummard is nowhere near the player that Alex was. With that said, maybe he will be in the next year or two. He definately shows traits that make him invaluable. It will be interesting to see how he turns out.

Originally Posted by Insensitive PAP (Post 62030)

in the 7th round by a Japanese basketball team, or something equivalent, so I think you overate him a bit. Don't get me wrong, he was an excellent basketball player but he was more a product of Majerus's system than anything else.

Utah played great defense because Majerus was a fantastic teacher of defense, and a master strategist. Majerus could gameplan to make teams do what the were bad at. This made the sum greater than the parts and made average players look better than they really were (see Jensen). All Majerus's teams played great defense, before and after Jensen.

Jensen was a very good on the ball defender, and he was a tirelss worker off the ball denying the opposing teams star from every getting the ball. He was great at using his body to minimize his athletic deficiencies. I give him all the credit for this. The problem is, Cummard is a great defender too, though you don't seem willing to recognize that, and it makes me wonder if you've even watched a BYU game.

You also seem to be stuck on comparing Jensen's junior and senior achievements to Cummard's sophomore season, which really makes no sense at all to a sane person.

Take Andre Miller or Michael Doleac off that team and nobody would have ever heard of Alex Jensen. Role players are only as good as the stars they support, and that's all Jensen was.

Originally Posted by Insensitive PAP (Post 62030)

Take Andre Miller or Michael Doleac off that team and nobody would have ever heard of Alex Jensen. Role players are only as good as the stars they support, and that's all Jensen was.

Originally Posted by mpfunk (Post 62035)

Also as a freshman and sophomore Jensen was just a role player, as a junior he was the second best player on the Utes. As a senior he was the best player on the Utes, and the best player in the MWC.

Originally Posted by Insensitive PAP (Post 62036)

I just think a lot of the credit goes to Majerus. He put great teams on the floor and the best players on good teams tend to get the credit. I have a hard time believing Jensen would be player of the year if he was playing for Giacoletti.

Originally Posted by RockyBalboa (Post 61988)

Saying you don't know enough, while in the same sentence saying Cummard wouldn't get off the bench...you're contradicting yourself.

It's like Funk making the comparisons he was making, then admitting later he hasn't watched ONE single BYU game all season.

Originally Posted by Indy Coug (Post 62005)

Alex Jensen benefitted from the Coattail Syndrome, where a player on a successful team gets more credit than they deserve because the team is successful.

It has nothing to do with offense, defense or special teams.

Alex Jensen was a good, but largely unspectacular player that I would want any self-respecting wingman for BYU to aspire to be better than.

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute (Post 62097)

Clearly, you are incapable of being objective because at that point in time, Utah treated BYU like a two-bit whore, which is more than BYU deserved during those days.