BYU Basketball: Will the Cougars ride momentum or continue their road woes?

The road has been a nightmare for BYU Basketball so far this season, and they’re headed back out for a Thursday night showdown at Pepperdine.

BYU Basketball finally came home last week, but if you blinked you may have missed it.

After five straight games away from the Marriott Center that spanned nearly a month, the Cougars came home for two quick games before heading back out on the road.

Fortunately, they were able to gain some momentum by picking up the two home victories, blowing out a struggling Portland squad and holding off a surging Santa Clara team.

Unfortunately, the Cougars have been downright miserable on the road. But unlike seasons past the road woes aren’t coming on the offensive side of the ball.

So far this year BYU is averaging 83.9 points at home and 82.7 points away from Provo. One fewer point per game isn’t nearly enough to explain why BYU is 9-1 at home and 2-7 elsewhere.

The answer comes on defense. The Cougars give up a reasonable 67.7 points at home, but they’re letting teams score 90.3 points against them each game.

That’s a flat-out ridiculous home/road split, and it tells the entire story of why the Cougars have been abysmal on the road. They’re almost single-handedly disproving the old basketball adage that defense travels.

Now BYU heads back out on the road, taking on a middling Pepperdine team on Thursday, followed by a matchup with one of the biggest surprises of the college basketball season in San Francisco.

We’ll get to the date with the Dons another time and focus on the Waves.

Shootout Coming

When your defense is already struggling on the road, it doesn’t help to take on a team that’s pretty good offensively. Pepperdine is in the Top 100 nationally in scoring offense, averaging 77.9 points per game, but they’re not particularly great on defense, giving up 73.6 points per contest.

Of course the Cougars will come in with a Top 25 scoring average (83.3 ppg), but they haven’t yet figured out what the word “defense” means on the road.

It would be no surprise at all if both teams reach the 90’s in this game, and triple-digits aren’t out of the question either.

Three-point Battle

Pepperdine shoots well from beyond the arc (36.8%) and they defend the three pretty well too (32.2%).

BYU doesn’t shoot well from distance (32.2%), although their average has been slowly rising, and they don’t defend the long ball particularly well (35.9%).

If the Waves beat the Cougars badly from the three-point line this game won’t even be close.

Ball Control

One thing the Waves do really well is force turnovers. Their opponents give it away 16.3 times per game, and 7.4 of those giveaways come from Pepperdine steals.

With a few exceptions, BYU has been good at avoiding turnovers, and if they can avoid giveaways on Thursday night they’ll be able to take advantage of those times that the Waves gamble for the ball and bust their defensive rotation.

Yin and Yang

Sophomore guard Colbey Ross and junior forward Kameron Edwards combine to drive the Pepperdine offense. Ross has the ability to take over a game, and he’s scored 20 or more points eight times this season.

Edwards, on the other hand, isn’t going to go off nearly as often, but he’s going to get his points each night.

The Cougars have to keep Ross from getting hot. If BYU can hold the duo to less that 40 points combined they should be in a good position to steal a game on the road.

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