BYU Basketball: Why the Santa Clara loss may be a blessing

BYU Basketball fell to the Santa Clara Broncos on a last second floater.

Losing is never fun. You can go to the best game ever but if your team came out on the wrong end, it still isn’t fun, at least not in the moment. But sometimes losing can be good for a team. As weird as it sounds, it is true and teams will tell you that.

In the case for BYU Basketball, I truly believe that losing to Santa Clara was best for the Cougars. Am I happy they lost? No, of course not, but I think this will be good for them, at least as they look forward towards the NCAA Tournament.

As I watched the game this morning on DVR, I was entertained by how close and back and forth the game was from the ten minute point (when ESPNU picked up the broadcast) to the final basket with .8 seconds remaining on the clock. Of course it was upsetting, but again looking back, it was a good thing.

The first reason why this was a good thing is that the Cougars learned a lot of lessons on end of game situations. While there are quite a few individual points I will lay out, the list is more extensive than this.

• Lobbing the ball down the court on an inbounds – Even if BYU gets trapped and loses the ball or throws the ball into a turnover, more time is taken off the clock then throwing out of bounds and giving the ball to the Bronco’s under their own hoop where they can set up a play.
• Not defending the three on an inbounds – What were they thinking? Up four points, the worst thing that BYU could have done was give up a quick three, which is exactly what they did.
• Using timeouts too early in the game – Part of the reason BYU ran into so many issues on the inbound throws was they couldn’t call a timeout. That caused panic and led to poor decisions.
• Getting trapped in the corner – Never throw the ball into the corner. And if you do, let the defender go through the body of Barcello and knock it out of bounds or pick up the foul. Barcello clearly had position and the only way he could make a mistake was to do exactly what he did.
• Missed free throws – Johnson on the free throw line wasn’t the worst decision, but you can’t miss both of those.
• Lane violation on a free throw – Again, Johnson made a huge mistake here. First, BYU has a decent shot on getting the offensive board. Even without it, asking Santa Clara to secure a rebound, get the ball to a ball handler and get a shot up in six seconds is much tougher than having the ball passed from the baseline with everyone set.
• Not tough enough defense – BYU should have learned this by now. The refs swallow their whistle on the final possession. Be more physical. Force the Santa Clara players to play through you, don’t just run with them.

Literally all of these things had to go wrong for BYU, AND Santa Clara had to capitalize on all of these things for them to win, and they did. Props to them for doing that. Now it is BYU’s job to learn from all of these situations and get better. Luckily, they all happened in one game, and not over the course of three or four games.

The second reason this may be a blessing in disguise is that BYU may now be headed towards a 10 or 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament. While that sounds awful, BYU doesn’t want a 8 or 9 seed. Had things gone as projected, the Cougars likely would have been in that game and had they won had to face a one seed in the Second Round.

Granted, BYU can’t have another loss like this, but if they don’t and are able to do what they are expected to do, a ten seed may be in their future.