BYU vs. Utah State

[MikeWaters]

This was a very nice win on the road.

1. It was huge getting the talented Utah State big in foul trouble. Collette. He was the best big in the game. That last charging foul was tough because Nate Austin was totally out of control. Nate Austin sucks so bad, it hurts my fingers just to type his name. I constantly have to look up his name every time I post because my brain wants to erase him from my memory. His development has been atrocious and I blame Rose for that. But one good thing about Nate. He is competitive and tries hard. It's just that he's good at nothing.

2. On the subject of bigs, why did Rose suddenly decide that Luke Worthington needed more minutes and that Neilsen and Kaufusi didn't need to see the court much? I don't get it.

3. And on the subject of baffling rotations, why was Josh Sharp getting more minutes? When it seemed like he was in the dog house for most of this season. Sharp reminds me of a poor man's Brandon Wright for the Mavericks. Tall, skinny power forward. Except Sharp can't finish, can't catch alley oops, and doesn't play great defense. When I say "poor man" I'm talking Bangladesh poor. Having said that, I far prefer Sharp to Nixon. Cause Nixon's defense is so terrible that I don't think he belongs on the floor at this level of basketball.

4. Collinsworth continues to show that he is the best player on this team. Most valuable. His free throw shooting tonight was esp. great. While Haws was having a hard time finding looks, Collinsworth was creating in the lane.

5. And kudos to Haws as well. For showing up on the road in a moderately big game. His stroke was pure. He didn't force too much, like he did many times last season. But was aggressive in the second half.

6. Anson Winder continues to be great. I was wondering in prior seasons why he was glued to the bench, didn't make sense to me. But I guess, based on the BYUTV announcers, that he had a chronic ankle injury that was slowing him down. Anson plays smart, plays great solid D on the perimeter, finishes in the lane, and just generally makes great decisions. Winder picked up a lot of Fischer's minutes tonight. And I can't argue with that.

7. Fischer is increasingly demonstrating that he is a pretty one dimensional player. He is a catch and shoot 3 point specialist. Can't put the ball on the floor effectively and can't create his own shot. Will need to see if he can get more synergy on this offense. Because the offense will always be seeking to create open looks for Haws. Can Haws leverage Fischer to BYU's advantage, if he is attracting extra attention?

8. I do like that Rose played man-to-man this game. I suppose there is a good argument that the zone was more effective in the 2nd half, but you can't just mail it in and play zone every game. Man up, go toe to toe, lift the pace, get some turnovers, go up and down.

9. It remains to be seen how good Utah State is. They don't look to have very good guard play. And that's going to be a big problem for them. So I'm not sure what this win is going to look like at the end of the season.

10. Skyler Halford, he's our Carlino for this year. Meaning he can be a great help, or he can hurt. Halford's unconventional shot means that it will never be consistent. He turns his body sideways, and has a kind of single motion wind-up shot. So many moving parts that it will never be good. Young kids, take note. But he is a ball handler and not a negative on defense, and he can create on the bounce. I wonder if he thinks waving his arms in circles as he plays defense makes him look faster?

[BlueK]

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I think Fischer is mostly a 3 specialist who can still be very useful even if he's not necessarily great at other stuff, although I don't think he's necessarily a big liability in other areas. Also, we've been playing him and Winder together quite a bit and Winder is very good at some of the things Fischer doesn't excel at, so it doesn't hurt us most of the time. Having a guy out there on the 3 pt line the other team always has to respect really helps when teams try the tackle and grab Haws strategy.

Also, I think Rose wanted to play man more last year and tried a few times but the set of players he had were terrible at it. This group is a little better, plus I think they've worked harder at it. It will help this team improve from last year. SDSU is really the only game I remember so far where they played mostly zone, but a lot of that is due to SDSU being worse against the zone.\

As far as USU goes, they just aren't very good. A 10 point win in Logan against them probably would have been a 20 point win at ESA or Provo. They have 3 or 4 decent players and nothing else, which isn't that surprising considering two-thirds of their team graduated or transferred out last year. We had to get this win at any cost. It won't help us much this year other than making the road record look better, but losing would have hurt. I do think they're doing a little better this year than what I expected however. Still, about 12 wins is the celing for them, I think.