BYU basketball: Five more Cougar Tipoff takeaways

Last week, the BYU Basketball game played for the first time in front of fans this season in the Cougar Tipoff.

BYU basketball season is just around the corner. Last week, the Cougars played in a Blue vs White game that for the most part left fans more excited for this season than when they showed up. Although there was a combination of positives and negatives, there were also some surprises.

Best Players – Yoeli Childs, Elijah Bryant

Yoeli Childs had the best game by far. He scored 23 points, pulled down seven rebounds and added two assists in 27 minutes. Of those 23 points, six of those came on alley-oops. He showed a better outside shot then what he had last year, however I would still say that the three point shot is a bit out of his range. Whenever Childs was in the game, it seemed to open up TJ Haws and Elijah Bryant for three point shots. Yoeli has to be the key player if the Cougars are going to be successful this season.

The other great player in this game was Elijah Bryant. He quietly had the most complete game of any player on the floor. Despite not being the point guard, Bryant led all players with eight assists. He also was the second leading scorer with 20 points on 7-10 shooting including 4-5 from beyond the arc.

Most disappointing players – Payton Dastrup, Nick Emery

Payton Dastrup had a performance that he wants to forget. Dastrup had seven fouls and six turnovers in 22 minutes while only scoring four points on 2-5 shooting that included two airballs. He also gave up a lot of easy baskets to Dalton Nixon and Luke Worthington while on defense. Although it was just one game, and everyone including Jimmer had off days, Dastrup did not show any signs of improvement from last season.

Nick Every did not have a terrible performance, he just didn’t really impress. Emery was 4-8 shooting and had four assists. He was only 1-4 from beyond the arc and did not pull down any rebounds in 37 minutes. Again, it was not a terrible performance, it was just more of what we saw last year, and that is a bit disappointing.

Biggest Surprise – BYU front court

The post play for both teams was phenomenal. Most fans believed that the post play was going to be Yoeli Childs and nobody else. Surprisingly however, Dalton Nixon and Luke Worthington played extremely well. Going against BYU’s starting players, Nixon and Worthington combined for 35 points on 15-22 shooting, eight rebounds and three steals. With Ryan Andrus on the bench, it would appear that BYU has a very solid front court if they can stay healthy.

Biggest Concern – Starting five and free throws

This could be a concern or a positive situation depending on how you look at it. With three minutes to go in the game, the backup squad cut the lead to 10 points. If not for a late surge and made free-throws, the white team would have outscored the starting team in the second half. For a team to be beating its backups by only ten points 37 minutes into a game, it either means that the starting five are not very good or that the backups are very good and not far behind the starters in talent. I would like to say it is the latter but it is still a big concern.

Also, the starters only shot 70 percent from the free throw line in the game. The backups shot 88 percent.

Best newcomer – Jahshire Hardnett

Jahshire Hardnett is the kind of player that every team needs on their roster to provide a possible spark. Hardnett had a very solid game across the board (14 points, seven assists and five rebounds). Although he only shot 3-9, he was able to get to the free throw line four times and knock down all eight free throws. He is a very fast and flashy player and appears to always be around the ball. Hardnett kind of has the sidekick super hero feel to him. You don’t expect much to happen since he is a backup (and really short) and before you know it he is flying by you scoring points.

Random thoughts

1. Because of the lack of success that the BYU football team has been having, I was wondering whether or not BYU fans would be excited for basketball season and show up to the scrimmage or be worn out from BYU sports. The fans showed up pretty well. Despite it not being called “Boomshakalaka” and not having the women’s team also playing, there were actually more people in attendance this year than there were last year.
2. BYU basketball has only one freshman player on its roster this season, Rylan Bergersen, and zero seniors! Find any other team in the country that basically only has sophomores and juniors on their rosters.
3. Out of the 33 shot attempts that were taken inside the three point line by the starters, 24 of them were makes. That is an overall shooting percentage of 73 percent inside the arc. If the Cougars can get anywhere near those percentages during the regular season, BYU basketball is going to win a lot of games.