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What: BYU (3-1) vs. No. 25 Alabama (4-0) When: Friday, Nov. 24, 2017 at 12:30 p.m. MST
Broadcast: Stadium College Basketball / KSL Newsradio
Live stats: KSL.com
PROVO — The early season schedule of BYU basketball, including a trio of exhibition games, has taken head coach Dave Rose’s squad to Albuquerque, New Mexico; Princeton, New Jersey; and the cozy home confines of the Marriott Center.
Now it will take them to the Big Apple.
BYU (3-1) plays the third game of the Barclay’s Center Classic at 12:30 p.m. MST Friday afternoon against No. 25 Alabama.
“I think we’re ready for it,” BYU forward Yoeli Childs said after Tuesday’s 95-88 win over Niagara in Provo. “Being able to travel to Princeton and win, and travel to New Mexico in the preseason, helped this team know how to travel and win on the road. I think we’re ready right now mentally, and we’re in a great position that we can go out and get some wins.”
Unlike when the Cougars first signed up for the challenging non-conference fixture, BYU’s game against the Tide (4-0) will take place on the campus of LIU-Brooklyn. The game will be broadcast on Facebook Live and KSL Newsradio.
The Cougars won’t head to the Brooklyn Nets’ home court until Saturday against UMass — a fact that irked Rose when presented with the late change of setting by the event organizers nearly a month ago.
"There wasn’t a very good explanation from the promoter, but we’re stuck. It’s what we’ve got,” Rose said. “Obviously we wouldn’t have signed up for this thing if we had known we were going to play the Barclay’s Classic at LIU. It hasn’t turned out how we really thought it would.”
What else the Cougars have, though, is a quality non-conference opponent.
The Crimson Tide are averaging 87.3 points per game, led by star freshman Collin Sexton (25.3 ppg) and John Petty (15.8 ppg). Behind third-year head coach Avery Johnson, Alabama has earned its climb into the Top 25 with a 4-0 record and a 77-76 comeback victory at home over UT Arlington last Tuesday in a campus-site game of the Barclay’s Center Classic.
“Arlington is good, but so is Alabama,” Rose said. “Their top recruit (Sexton) had 29, so that’s something that we will start with and try to get it under control.”
The Cougars are guaranteed two games in Brooklyn, one at LIU-Brooklyn’s Steinberg Wellness Center, and another against the Minutemen at the Barclay’s Center. The team will then return to Provo in time for Wednesday’s “crosstown clash” at Utah Valley at 7 p.m. Nov. 29.
And BYU hopes to pick up a few things by then.
“First is wins; we want to win. On top of that, we need growth,” forward Luke Worthington said. “I think there will be a lot of learning. Pretty much every college team right now is playing a lot of games.
“We’re just excited for the opportunity to play, to travel, and we’ve been to that part of the country already. Hopefully we’ll feel like we are at home. BYU always travels, so we know they will have our back. We just want to keep learning — it’s a long season, and one game is not going to determine how the season goes. It’s a marathon in basketball.”
