BYU Basketball appears to be headed to the NIT for the first time under Mark Pope.
Last offseason, and really ever since Mark Pope arrived, the focus in recruiting has primarily been centered on recruiting and bringing transfers to fill in gaps. While on the surface this sounds great, after a season where two transfers appear to be trending towards being one year players, and only a year after Matt Haarms only played for one season, it has brought this strategy under the microscope.
If you want a detailed comparison and deep dive into this issue click here.
As a brief summary of what I covered, essentially in a 48 minute simulation Te’Jon Lucas and Seneca Knight were only slightly more efficient than Spencer Johnson and Trevin Knell. This begs the question as to whether or not getting these two players for one season (I’m seriously not convinced Knight will play next season since he is an academic senior and has already transferred three times) was worth giving up playing time for Knell and Johnson who both have more eligibility.
This also took away playing time from players like Hunter Erikson and Trey Stewart who barely saw the court this past season. Next year, Erickson may be a starter and Stewart may be thrown into the backup point guard position.
So as fans look into the future it appears that the state of the program is going south. But we’ve seen this happen before, just not in basketball.