I'm going to say that this board has been burned by football so badly that they are missing on expectations for this basketball team.

Four major differences with this team vs last years team--
1) We are led by seniors. In the past, this has been good for BYU.
2) The supporting cast is deeper and younger. This means we are less susceptible to foul trouble (our Achilles heel last year) and that we could see more improvement in-season that in past seasons as the young guys (Kafusi) get their head on straight.
3) Although I could be wrong, I don't see us having the Carlino-centered-emotional-meltdown we did for a month mid-December to mid-January last year. Of course, if KC can't step up and play better we could, but I think there will be a more linear path of performance improvement as this team learns to play together. You can debate skill sets of Fischer vs. Carlino, but so far Fischer seems to be a uniting force on the team and pretty consistent with the type of play we get from him, while Carlino was (unintentionally) a little divisive because he would be a different player from one game to the next, forcing others to readjust their roles on the team.
4) This is the biggest difference--with the exception of Mauii, OUR TOUGHEST NON-CONFERENCE GAMES ARE AT HOME! It has been years since this was the case. I wouldn't expect this team to beat Stanford, UMass, and Utah on the road. But I believe we CAN beat them in the Marriott Center. And having those wins on the resume and the RPI will make a big difference.

We likely lose in Hawaii (I only hope it is the championship game and not vs. SDSU). We will probably lose one more non-conference games--but possibly not because our hardest games are at home. We will drop three or so in WCC play--but I think we will beat every one but Gonzaga in Provo and we have a shot a Gonzaga as well. That leaves a loss in Spokane and a couple of other road games. 2-1 in the WCC tourney puts us at 27-6 or possibly 28-5 going into selection Sunday. With the non-conference slate we are playing, that should be good enough for a top 30 RPI, and a #6-7 tournament seed. This will be a good year for the basketball program.

I realize our starters looked sloppy last night, but some of the comments I've seen about this deep and experienced team make me shake my head. This will be a good year for BYU basketball!