BYU Basketball: Shot defense and two more keys to beating Rice
By Shaun Gordon
Rice invades the Marriott Center on Wednesday night, and they have the capability to shoot BYU Basketball right out of their own gym.
BYU Basketball will face their biggest test since their season-opening loss when they take on Rice on Wednesday night.
Are the Owls on par with Nevada? Not at all. They’re closer in talent level to Utah Valley, but Rice is playing better basketball right now, especially on the offensive end of the court.
Rice enters the matchup with BYU at 3-2, following up a close loss at Houston with a complete 102-74 drubbing of Northwestern State.
Unlike this upcoming Saturday’s Holy War, Wednesday’s Marriott Center matchup could turn into a track meet, and if the Cougars don’t watch out they may not be able to keep up.
In order to keep Rice from running away with the game, the Cougars are going to have to do three things well on Wednesday:
1 – Contest Shots
Seems pretty obvious, right?
But making sure that Rice doesn’t get off easy shots is extremely important in this game.
The Owls shoot the ball extremely well, hitting 48% of their attempts, including 37% from distance. They’re 19th in the nation in effective field goal percentage, yet their overall offensive efficiency is only average.
Why? Because they turn the ball over a lot (14.2 per game), don’t get to the line often (12.8 attempts per game) and shoot terribly from the line when they do get there (62.1%).
Which means that if the Cougars can force Rice to take tough contested shots, the Owls will make enough mistakes otherwise on offense to limit themselves.
But if Rice can get good looks and get them often they will find themselves scoring in the 80’s or 90’s.