The Cougs had it, then they didn’t. And it’s time to crush them. Well, not all of them. Keena Young was unstoppable in the second half. Mike Rose hit every open look he had. Sam Burgess gave some quality hustle and rebounds in limited minutes. Austin Ainge managed the offense impeccably despite a tough shooting night.

The culprit was Trent Plaisted. While most of the Cougars battled and scrapped to make shots, Plaisted bumbled around looking lost and out of sync. He managed a meager 9 point and 5 boards in 28 minutes. To put his ineptitude in perspective, Sam Burgess managed 5 rebounds in only 6 minutes.

Despite flashes of brilliance in his first two seasons, Plaisted is quickly taking shape as an underacheiver. He has all the physical tools, all the talent, all the gifts to be an NBA-caliber basketball player. Unfortunately, he lacks the mental discipline to be great. It’s evident in his ghastly free throw shooting, his lack of shooting touch, his reliance solely on his left hand in the post.

How did Derrick Brown manage to corral 16 rebounds? Plaisted was out of position all night. Rebounding was a battle that BYU was supposed to dominate with its size. Plaisted proved that size is only half the battle. You have to play smart and with discipline, both of which were in short supply from #44.

A few action items for Trent’s summer workouts:

1. 500 free throws a day
2. 1-on-1 games with left hand tied up
3. Read everything written about or by Bill Russell
4. Show up in October ready to realize full potential

BYU will go up against Xavier Thursday night at 7:30 on CBS (Sweet! A game I can see on TV!). Let’s take a snapshot look at Xavier’s team to get an idea of what the Cougars will be up against in Lexington:

Xavier University Musketeers
24-8 (13-3)

Head Coach: Sean Miller, 3^rd year (62-31)

Xavier’s success this starts with Drew Lavender, Xavier’s 5-7 point guard. Lavender averages 11.2 ppg, 4.7 apg and is the engine that makes the Musketeers go…OK, change of plans: Xavier is a good team. I take nothing away from that. With that said, BYU has no excuse if they lose this game. BYU is ranked #23 in the nation, even after losing to UNLV, as Greg Wrubel put it, at the UNLV Invitational (a.k.a. the MWC Conference Tournament). BYU played a MUCH tougher schedule and still finished one win better than Xavier. BYU is clearly the better team in this match-up and had better prove it in convincing fashion.

On the whole, Xavier is probably a more athletic team than BYU. However, BYU ought to negate any disparity there with a significant size advantage. Trent Plaisted and Keena Young should be absolutely licking their chops since Xavier’s tallest player is only 6-9. BYU should dominate on the boards and get lots of second chance points. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that those two stats, rebounding and 2nd chance points, will be the telling statistics.

Good luck to the Cougs tomorrow as they go for their first NCAA Tournament win in 12 years.

Don’t be fooled by the indifferent and mildly grateful responses parroted by Cougar players and coaches after their miserable #8 seed was announced yesterday. They know that they (and UNLV, for that matter) deserved to be seeded much higher in the NCAA tournament field. Ranked #23 nationally and boasting an RPI in the top 20 in the nation, BYU had to endure the embarrassment of having their credentials spit upon by the Selection Committee, while jet-puffed, 10+ loss squads Virginia Tech, USC and Vanderbilt received more favorable seeds.

The usual suspects are in play on this one: Big 6 conferences getting too much love, big name schools in down years riding their reputation to unfair seeds, and so forth. This year is unique for BYU, though, because they actually had a case to be seeded as high as a #5. The main culprit this year is that blankety-blank TV deal that took BYU completely off the national radar. The east coast media bias usually is held in check by national networks coverage of west coast teams, but the Mountain West no longer enjoys any visibility to make its case for a prominent place in the tournament draw. BYU got a #8 seed because the Selection Committee only has BYU on paper, plus a history of first round exits. Had committee members had a chance to take in a BYU game or two (aside from that abysmal Michigan State game), BYU might be enjoying a more favorable first-round matchup and avoiding a potential second-round date with Ohio State, the #1 team in the nation.

Our conference commissioner, Mr. Craig Thompson, should absolutely be fired. In fact, he should be put in the stocks on the campus of every Mountain West school and subjected to whatever punishment deemed appropriate by each school’s shafted fan base. How he retains a job at which he has miserably failed is beyond me, unless Jim Delaney is secretly pulling strings behind the scenes because Thompson is making it easy for the power conferences to maintain the status quo. The university presidents of the MWC need to move to get him ousted before anything worse happens.

As for BYU’s players and coaches, they now have ample motivation to come out with fire in their bellies and prove the Idiot Committee wrong. Don’t buy the TV rhetoric by the players and coaches: they’re mad and they should be. Hopefully it will translate into a strong first round win and a crack at the Ohio State Oden & Friends.

BYU throttled Utah on Saturday. *yawn* In a showcase of just how good life is for the Cougars, and how bad life is for the Utes, the BYU men’s basketball team put an exclamation point on their league championship effort by pimp-smacking the Utes 85-62. The win completed BYU’s first season sweep of Utah in men’s basketball since the 1991-92 season. Moving on…

I’m more interested in what kind of national statement the Cougars can make in the conference and NCAA tournaments. Though it doesn’t seem like it, thanks to the Comcast Commies not distributing the mtn. network soon enough, BYU just had one of the most successful regular seasons in school history. It would be a shame, just a shame, to waste it on a poor post-season showing. Thus, the Cougars’ most important business lies ahead of them.

The best chance BYU has to advance in the NCAA tournament is to win the MWC tournament and thus earn the highest seed possible in the NCAA bracket. Sounds like a no-brainer and it is. But it’s more important than that. Mountain West schools (outside of the U.) don’t usually get much respect from the Selection Committee when it comes to seedings. As much pub as BYU has been getting as a bracket buster and so forth, the stodgy prunes on the committee won’t hesitate to punish BYU for a slight misstep. A potential #4 seed could easily become an 8-10 if BYU flops at the conference tourney this week.

BYU needs a high seed to make sure they don’t get a great team in the first round of the NCAA tournament.  The Cougars will be sure to have tournament jitters since they only go about once every other year. Off the top of my head, I don’t think any current member of the squad has played in the Big Dance. The reason I think a high seed is so important is because the Cougars’ downfall in recent NCAA history has been a slow first half and having to battle from behind only to fall short at the end. If the Cougs can weather the first half, they’re almost sure to win based on that history. The lower the seed of the opponent, the better the chance that BYU will be able to shake off the nerves and play well.

Other notes:

Congrats to Keena Young, Dave Rose, and Jonathan Tavernari for their respective conference awards (POY, COY, FOY)! Congrats also to Trent Plaisted for his second-team All-MWC selection.  BYU’s outstanding season is reflected in a strong showing by these individuals.

OK, I was so exhausted after work yesterday that I forgot about the men’s basketball game completely and heard about it on the radio this morning. The men’s basketball team is mirroring the football team in that the seniors are finally getting redemption for the hard times up until now. It was great that Keena Young, Austin Ainge and Jimmy Balderson finally got a win at Air Force.

I still don’t know what to make of this team, though. It seems like the SDSU game was an aberration, but BYU got blown out in that game. That shows a lack of effort in that game, and BYU can’t get away with a lack of effort come tournament time. BYU needs to steel its resolve for each and every game regardless of the opponent or this season will likely end in disappointment again.

Which bring us to Saturday.

This game shouldn’t be a problem for BYU. Home game. It’s the Utes. A chance at an outright conference title, the first since ‘87-’88. Perhaps a chance to regain a national ranking.

Despite plenty of motivation, I’m not resting easy. Never at any point this season did I feel like BYU was completely in the driver’s seat going into a game. Shouldn’t a top-25 team evoke that feeling from fans? Shouldn’t a loss be devastating in that situation? I was disappointed that BYU lost to SDSU, but I wasn’t devastated. I certainly wasn’t shocked. I was surprised that BYU pulled off the win in Clune Arena last night. All of this makes me secretly (not anymore, I guess) wonder if BYU is for real. I’m not wowed. It could be because I’ve only seen them a couple of times this year, but let’s not open that moldy can again.

Here’s a few reasons why I just can’t seem to buy in all the way:

1. BYU’s best player can’t shoot from further than 15 feet. Their second best player can’t even make half of his free throws. Young and Plaisted will be counted on to take over games in the conference and NCAA tournaments.
2. BYU relies heavily on 3-point shooting. As we all know, 3-point shooting is a fickle friend. BYU could easily lose any game in which the threes aren’t falling. For the season, they’re shooting .406 from behind the arc, which is pretty dang good. Come tournament time, that figure needs to be a minimum, not an average–especially with the lack of depth inside.

In spite of those things, BYU does have some good things going for them:

1. They out-rebound their opponents (when they play hard).
2. BYU has a do-everything player: Lee Cummard. He’s not he first or second option on offense, but he is solid across the board–.551 from the field, .449 from 3 pt. range, .811 from the FT line, 5.6 boards per game. He’s also second in blocks and first in steals. I don’t even care that he went to Mesa High anymore.

I’m stoked for the rivalry game on Saturday. If BYU clinches an outright title, I may even have to snap a picture with my cell phone and rotate it as my wallpaper with my snapshot of the football team after they clinched the title against Wyoming.