BYU Basketball: Yoeli Childs to declare for the NBA Draft

One day after BYU Head Coach Dave Rose announced that he will be leaving, star forward Yoeli Childs also declared that he will be leaving BYU Basketball.

It should come as no surprise that Yoeli Childs has decided to declare for the NBA Draft and hire an agent. Last year Childs worked out for a few NBA teams and was told to come back for another season to improve his perimeter game and overall playing style.

While his perimeter play did improve, it is anyone’s guess whether it will be enough to be picked up by an NBA team or if he will have to follow the steps of Eric Mika and Elijah Bryant and play overseas.

Childs joins former Cougars Jahshire Hardnett and Rylan Bergersen as players who have already declared that they will not being playing with the Cougars next season.

BYU Basketball was hoping that with Nick Emery having a full offseason to improve as well as TJ Haws and Zac Seljaas that Childs would stay to make a solid team next season. None of them have ever experienced playing in the NCAA Tournament, in fact, nobody on the team has which would serve as motivation for the three seniors and Childs to get there.

The likely top players now for BYU will be TJ Haws, Nick Emery, Jesse Wade and Zac Seljaas. Gavin Baxter showed potential but was not as effective when teams focused on him. Dalton Nixon is a defensive stopper but not very effective on offense. Besides Baxter and Nixon, there won’t be any forwards returning with major playing time.

If we remember 2011, outside of Jimmer, once Brandon Davies was suspended the guards were shut down more effectively than before. That was because BYU only had Noah Hartsock and Charles Abouo which were both small forwards known more for their perimeter play. Although the Cougars went on to win many games including games against UNLV and Gonzaga, there was an obvious drop in production from the guards because they weren’t getting the open shots that they had when defenses had to be honest with Davies down low.

It is likely that the team will have to run a similar offense next season as the 2010-2011 team after Davies was suspended. Can they win games? Absolutely. But if they play a team with two strong forwards similar to how Florida did in 2011, BYU is going to really struggle to get stops and score inside.

Cougar fans can now only hope that the new coach who comes in will be able to recruit a few big men so that BYU Basketball does not continue to go in a downward trend that it has been on for the past few weeks and months.

To Yoeli Childs, good luck and thank you for the great memories!