HB Arnett’s
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372 - 0819
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West 800 South –
Vol. 33,
Issue 25 – January 21, 2013
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BYU’s St.
Mary’s Model, Matrix or Mode Not Working
By March of this year, BYU will have
played St. Mary’s either 5 or 6 (depending on whether the two teams face
each other in the WCC tournament in Las Vegas) times in the last three seasons.
To date, BYU’s Dave Rose and St.
Mary’s Randy Bennett have faced off four times in the last three years.
The Gaels hold a current 3-1 record between the two schools. You can make that
4-1 after the two teams meet again in late February in
NCAA basketball teams can’t make
trades for tougher inside players and higher basketball IQ’s on the guard
line, so don’t dream of BYU suddenly matching up better with SMU the next
time they meet.
The dominance of BYU by St. Mary’s
could very easily be 4-0 if not for Jimmer Fredette hitting a 30 foot jumper
with time running out in 2010.
In case you forgot, BYU was trailing by
one with 11 seconds remaining when Fredette hit his only 3-pointer of the game
for BYU’s only St .Mary’s win, a 74-73 victory in the South Padre
Island Tournament in
Both teams have good coaches. We can
debate the call by Rose at the end of last
week’s game not to call a timeout
and set up a defense to keep the ball out of the hands of Matthew Dellavedova,
but Rose is a good coach.
Gaels’ Guard
In case you forgot, the Aussie point guard
for the Gaels fired up his own version of a Fredette long ball for the 70-69
win over the Cougars. That negated the clutch play of Tyler Haws on BYU’s
last two possession of the game when the sophomore star hit two shots that
should have sealed the deal for BYU.
Here’s the deal from my perspective.
BYU isn’t currently built to handle St. Mary’s. The Cougars are way
too soft inside and they are way too inconsistent at the guard line.
Last week we mentioned that Brandon Davies
had gone on sabbatical offensively. We were wrong. He has gone AWOL and
underground. That is the only way to rationalize the fact that he had zero
rebounds against the Gaels last week.
Matt Carlino had his moments against
That’s the bad news for the past
three years and the next one or two games against the Gaels this season.
Good News
Here’s the good news.
Graduation will solve most of these issues
for Dave Rose and his staff.
The biggest graduation will be that of
Dellavedova. He is gone to the NBA after this season.
Don’t know if Brandon Davies will
find similar work next season in that league, but he will be gone from BYU.
His front court counterparts for the Cougars
do return in Nate Austin and Ian Harward, but you don’t think of post
presence or inside toughness with those two guys.
Rose will be adding inside toughness with
two incoming freshman next season. Both Eric Mika and Luke Worthington can dish
it out from the post.
I am not talking about dishing out
assists, but some muscle, toughness and rebounding for next year to match up
more favorably with teams like St. Mary’s.
The rest of the good news is that the
guard line will be augmented with the addition of BYU’s own poor
man’s version of Matthew Dellavedova.
Back From
Kyle Collinsworth will be back from his
LDS mission in Russian in time for next season. Rose is on record already that
Collinsworth will see plenty of time at point guard for his team.
That means that if Carlino is going to put
up long distance three pointers, he will be doing it from the two guard spot.
Collinsworth is not overly athletic.
Neither is Dellavedova, but both have a knack for butting their way up the
court regardless of pressure and both can slash and slice to the rim and either
score or dish the ball off for easy layups.
Dellavedova is a much better outside and
free throw shooter than Collinsworth is at present, but both are big time
rebounders from the guard position. Collinsworth has a knack for the ball off
the boards and he should at 6-6. He will be a guard match up nightmare for
opposing teams.
Collinsworth will give Dave Rose an upper
hand with mixing and matching his guard line to face different teams and
styles.
Tyler Haws will do nothing but get better
and with a bigger, stronger and deeper inside presence, it will accelerate and
accentuate his game.
BYU fans will only have to deal with
Dellavedova for one or two more games, but St. Mary’s will have to deal
with a bigger, tougher, and more diverse Cougar guard line beginning next
season.
To get a glimpse of the increased
toughness, size and depth coming to BYU’s front court next season watch
these two videos.
FROM LP TO CD TO
MP3’s…FUTURE IS ALMOST HERE
When it comes to music, I am old enough to
remember when LP stood for Long
Playing albums. I made the transition to CD’s
which are compact discs. Now we have progressed to MP3’s.
All three acronyms apply to the future of
BYU basketball.
Only this time LP stands for
Those commits and signees will insure a
bright horizon and Cougar Destiny in BYU’s basketball future.
MP3 is for MPEG and audio layer 3. When it comes to BYU basketball, MP3 is for 3 Major Players from
Those 3 players and the rest of the
Meanwhile, here is a nice recent synopsis
of the
.
Mendenhall’s Maid
Service…Cleans House Offensively
BYU’s offense was messy and
malfunctioning for most of the season last year.
Bronco Mendenhall didn’t wait for a
good spring cleaning.
He started to clean and clear the entire
offensive house immediately after the Poinsettia Bowl in December.
Now the entire offensive coaching staff
has been let go and Mendenhall is in the process of replacing all five coaches.
First to go was Lance Reynolds. BYU
announced his retirement but we have never heard Reynolds use that word. Always
the loyal soldier, Reynolds did what BYU wanted him to do a year ago, but
didn’t.
Mark Weber, the former offensive line
coach, was also canned, but the news release focused on him finding new
employment at
Robert Anae was brought in to be retried
and reconciled as a retread offensive coordinator. His last job was at
When Anae left two years ago, it was not a
nice parting of the ways. Just listen to Tom Holmoe on the BYUtv show
“True Blue” from a week ago. You can see the replay of the program
online.
At the 8:15 mark of the program while
being interviewed by Dave McCann asking about the rehire of Robert Anae after
leaving BYU two years previously. Holmoe said this: “There was a little
bit of turmoil and for whatever reasons that maybe Bronco and Robert can talk
about it. There was a breakaway and now they’re back together
again”.
Reconciliation is always nice, but revving
up the scoreboard when all is said and done will be nicer.
If you were keeping score, it was adios to
Reynolds and Weber and hello to Anae. Everybody knew that Mark Atuaia was a
slam dunk to soon be added to the coaching staff.
Before that officially happened, BYU
announced that two additional offensive coaches had been let go. That was
running back coach Joe DuPaix and wide receiver coach Ben Cahoon.
Lingering
That meant four of the previous offensive
coaches were now officially gone. The lingering question was Brandon Doman. BYU
was and is bending over backwards to accommodate the former offensive
coordinator to allow him to make a gracious exodus.
There is still no official word on Doman
leaving, but several sources have said that they saw him cleaning out his
office at the football facility and loading his car with the items.
That’s not a press release, but enough
to say that he too is gone.
Meanwhile, BYU announced the official
hiring of three coaches to join Anae on the staff. Atuaia was made official and
Garrett Tujague, the head coach at College of the Canyons in
Tujague is a former Cougar offensive
lineman. BYU has not announced where these two coaches will be working, but
local reports in
BYU also announced the hiring of Aaron
Roderick, the wide receiver coach from
Roderick had second thoughts and likely a
significant raise from the Utes to keep him and keep
Yo You Ma(n)
Roderick is the Yo Yo Ma(m) without a
cello. He repeated what he also did a few years back when he accepted a job
with the Washington Huskies only to do an about face after just two weeks on
the job.
The bottom line is that BYU is now still
looking for two more offensive coaches. Nepotism indicates that they
won’t stray too far from the family tree for new coaches.
Currently all three offensive coaches in
place are former BYU players. Of course the former player that all Cougar fans
fantasize about being on the staff is Ty Detmer.
Just an opinion, but I don’t see Detmer
surfacing in
On the other hand, BYU may be telling
Detmer that he could come and coach and be a serious future candidate to replace
Bronco Mendenhall when he leaves.
I always thought that Brandon Doman would
be a better BYU head coach than an assistant coach. He was personable,
articulate, approachable and a great representative of the Church and school.
Now that he is gone, Detmer also would
have the same attributes. He too would be perfect in the role that LaVell
Edwards so beautifully fulfilled.
Coaching skill and acumen is a bonus.
In the current case, Mendenhall has plenty
of coaching acumen as demonstrated by his defensive prowess.
Leagues Away
He still is leagues away from LaVell in
the customer service and public relations departments, however.
Names that keep percolating and popping up
as candidates to flesh out the offensive coaching roster are Paul Peterson, the
former
So was Steve Clark. After serving as a GA
at BYU he is now the offensive coordinator at
There are some BYU fans that think BYU
would be well served by hiring a coach of color to fill out the staff. That
certainly has merit. BYU should also try to appease those LDS feminist women
who promote pants as appropriate attire at Church.
That settles it. BYU should follow the
lead of the Augusta National Golf Club and hire Condoleezza Rice.
She is black, a woman and has been known
to occasionally wear pants. And Cougar coach Condoleezza has a nice
alliterative ring to it.
Meanwhile, we think BYU will not make any
announcements until Brandon Doman can resolve his future employment status.
Doman deserves some dignity in leaving
BYU. It will be good and gracious for both parties to be able to announce in
future press releases that he has left BYU for another opportunity.
Football Fluff and Stuff
In case you missed it last week, Chip
Kelly, the now former head coach at
That may not mean much to you and me, but
it may mean very much to former BYU head coach Gary Crowton. Kelly and Crowton
go way back with their connections at the
It was Crowton who was a key cog in
getting Kelly hired from the obscurity of UNH to
It would not be a surprise to me if
Crowton doesn’t resurface in the NFL on Kelly’s staff with the
Eagles. Crowton is currently employed by the
This past Saturday, the NCAA voted to
approve several new rules relating to recruiting that will change the way it is
done in hopes of alleviating the convoluted and contentious recruiting rules
already in place.
Among the rule changes that will go into effect Aug. 1 are four specifically relatied to recruiting:
Proposal 13-3, allowing coaches to send unlimited texts and
social media messages to recruits, as well as make unlimited phone calls.
Proposal 13-5-A, which eliminates restrictions on printed
recruiting materials sent to recruits.
Proposal 11-2, allowing for a recruiting coordinator or the
support staff at a university to send texts and make calls, as opposed to the
current system, which permit only coaches to do so.
And Proposal 11-4, allowing all assistants to be on the road
recruiting at the same time, as opposed to the current rules that require
coaches’ trips to be staggered.
There are pros and cons to these new recruiting
rules. It will make recruiting basketball players much easier on coaching
staffs. They, at the most, have 1-5 players they are recruiting each season.
For football coaches, their lives just got
more difficult. To be competitive and make sure they are doing what the
competition is doing, they will no longer have a home or family life.
The difference is that while unlimited
calls and texts to just a handful of recruits can be manageable, having to call
and text and tweet to 25-30 football recruits will be a cumbersome task.
Granted, some of the contact can now be
done by support staff and an official recruiting coordinator who is not
actually a football coach, but like anything else, the recruits and customers
always want to talk to the guys in charge.
It should be interesting. The new rules
for recruiting go into effect on August 1 of this year.
On the subject of recruiting, BYU picked
up a couple of more commitments over this past weekend.
Chasen Anderson is a 6-0, 215 pound linebacker
from
Also committing was Josh Carter, a 6-5,
280 pound offensive lineman from
Basketball Briefs
With a 74-57 win over
The win moves BYU to 15-5 on the year and
5-1 in WCC play.
Speaking of temperature, hell will have to
freeze over for BYU to win its next game this Thursday against Gonzaga in
Not only are the Zags extremely talented,
they have added motivation to bounce back from their own version of getting St.
Married late Saturday night against
BYU is motivation enough for Gonzaga to
play the Cougars, but now that motivation is piled higher and deeper with the
last second giveaway to
The problem BYU will have with the
Bulldogs is their size. They have lots of it.
Brandon Davies has had his moments this
season, but we don’t look for him to have many this Thursday. He has a
penchant for foul problems and you can rest assured that the Gonzaga front line
will exacerbate those problems.
Tyler Haws will be his usual self in
producing points and playing hard, but we don’t expect much from Davies,
based on his most recent outings.
For BYU to have any chance of hell
freezing over and the Cougars coming away with a major upset, they will have to
get great play from Matt Carlino.
We don’t see any of this happening.
This is one of those times when you know a whipping is coming and you just have
to prepare to endure it.
BYU will get a chance to bounce back from
this sure fire loss on Saturday when they continue on the road at
The Pilots were drubbed by St.
Mary’s last Saturday night in
Both the Gonzaga and
Television
Timetable
BYU vs.
Gonzaga
Thursday, Jan 24 at
Tipoff: 9:00 pm Mountain Time
TV: ESPN2
BYU vs.
Saturday, Jan 26 at
Tipoff: 8:30 pm Mountain Time
TV: ESPNU
BYU vs.
Pepperdine
Thursday, January 26 at
Tipoff: 8:00 pm Mountain Time
TV: Time Warner Cable and
Root Sports in
BYU vs.
Saturday, Feb 2 at
Tipoff: 7:00 pm Mountain Time
TV: BYUtv
BYU vs.
Thursday, Feb 7 at
Tipoff: 8:00 pm Mountain Time
TV: BYUtv
BYU vs.
Saturday, Feb 9 at
Tipoff: 7:00 pm Mountain Time
TV: BYUtv