Utah MBB at byu – What do you know?

It’s a toss-up for me.

Advantage Utah: Size. BYU-P is undersized and can’t compete down low. Expect us to pound the rock inside. If Collette and Rawson play like actual big men, they will get BYU-P’s lousy excuse for a center in foul trouble and Utah wins.

Advantage BYU-P: Home court. Their fans are so desperate to beat Utah at anything – and they sense a real opportunity here – that they will be rabidly eating each other throughout this one. Things will be uttered that they wouldn’t want their bishops to hear. If Utah doesn’t quiet them early, expect BYU-P to get hot from 3 and go on some runs that Utah can’t come back from.

They’re very similar to what we saw in USU, but a little better. We present some matchup problems for them, with our wings and big men. Nuetral court or at the Huntsman and it wouldnt be close

That said, we’ve played like s**t on the road this year (and the last couple years OOC) so it really could go either way. 

The Utes had a decided size advantage on Butler, yet couldn’t do anything with it.   That was disappointing, especially considering we hace an experienced big man and supposedly a coach noted for coaching bigs.  That and the desperation effect and home court advantage of TDS have me concerned about this one.  One good thing about the USU game is that Coach will have some teaching points for the week coming out of that one.

Key to a win will be finding a hot hand outside, whether it be Bealer, Bibbins and/or Rawson.  Bryant, Childs and TJ Haws each contribute about a quarter of the TDS ohfense, so defensive effort should focus on them and hope no other gets a hot hand like Taylor did for the Aggies.

Pure stats, Sagarin Predictor, with the 3.18 home court advantage, favors TDS by 1.4