BYU basketball: Cougars are better defensively than you think

BYU basketball has had some pretty sharp ups and downs through the course of their season. What has almost never wavered? The block.

Here’s a stat that may have snuck up on you: BYU basketball leads the WCC in blocked shots per game at an even 5.0 average.

That’s better than Gonzaga, at 4.4, and well ahead of LMU at a distant third at 3.7. It puts the Cougars at 44th in the country in rejections per game. No other WCC team is within the top 50.

This stat was amply evident Saturday afternoon against Pacific. The struggling Tigers had few fine moments, staying in shouting distance into the second half. But the looming threat of a stuff from Yoeli Childs, Corbin Kaufusi, and especially Eric Mika stymied them time after time.

Mika added three blocks to his 17 points and 10 rebounds for a 7th straight double-double. One of those blocks he spiked into the floor. Another he swatted away and then leapt out of bounds to chuck the ball back into the hands of a teammate. Childs and Kaufusi each had a pair of rejections.

Blocks came both on ball and in help defense. The height and length of BYU’s bigs obviously bothered the Tigers. After getting sent back to mom a couple times, Pacific missed a number of bunnies at the rim. They ended up shooting just 31 percent for the game.

Even with the Tigers’ dilapidated snail offensive pace keeping the Cougars to a season-low 62 points, 31 percent from the field is not going to get you a lot of Ws.

In fairness, the Cougars get a boost to their swat-stats due to the fact that their guards have been allowing a bit too much dribble penetration. And block consistency hasn’t been as much of a factor in losses so much as lapses in 3-point defence. But with the exception of St. Mary’s (where Jock Landale was throwing buckets into the ocean) the only way to beat the Cougars was to go outside.

And the Cougars 3-point defense isn’t as bad as you’d think.

They are second only to Gonzaga in conference, allowing only an average of about 30 percent from deep per game. It’s only in the losses that suddenly they can’t find the same guy who just hit the last five long-range shots.

And it’s not about effort from the guards, either. The backcourt is getting angry and aggressive, as the Pacific game clearly showed. Emery still leads the WCC in steals, and is the chosen lockdown defender on the perimeter that BYU has needed desperately to stymie the other team’s top guard. And TJ Haws is starting to show how much he wants it.

Welcome to the TJ Evil Gremlin face.

It leads to a conclusion that we’ve been chewing on all season. The 2016-17 BYU basketball team is plenty talented enough to win every game they play. It’s only inconsistency in a few games, especially on the defensive end, that have kept them from going from a good team to a great one.

Can they finally defend against a good team on the road? Putting Pacific in that category might be straining things a bit. But it could be something to build off of for when they face Santa Clara this coming Thursday. They did beat the Broncos by 30 in Provo, largely thanks to shutting down their main scoring threat in Jared Brownridge.

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They’ll have to do it again on the road to keep their last NCAA hopes alive. But win or lose, don’t be surprised if BYU makes Santa Clara look a Thanksgiving turkey in the paint.

Stuffed.