They are streaky. KSU looks good, they beat Purdue pretty strongly.

LBSU beat them soundly. But then they lost at UCLA by a rather large margin as well.

Let's look at LBSU's, if they won/lost, and their shooting percentage in that game.

@ BYU. Loss. Shot 59% from the 3, and 54% from the field. -5

Vs. SFSU. Win. Shot 56% from the 3, and 54% from the field. +10

@ Xavier. Loss. Shot 38% from the 3, and 55% from the field. -23

Vs. KSU. Win. Shot 39% from the 3, and 44% from the field. +9

@ UCLA. Loss. Shot 29% from the 3, and 43% from the field. -14 (but this game was a lot closer than it seemed)



Interesting. Very interesting IMHO. KSU shot a HORRIBLE percentage against LBSU (14%, 32%).


Since Lamb returned they've shot a much lower percentage. He's shooting 18% and 33%. He'll bounce back, but that's part of what brought on the lower numbers in the three most recent games.

Anyway, three conclusions:

1. We got their absolute best. Partially our fault, we didn't defend the three well at all. Either way and even with open looks, they shot a ridiculous percentage against us and we got the W.

2. Like any team that depends on jump shooting for scoring, they can get cold and lose to anybody BADLY (Xavier's a good team, but that big of a margin is a bad loss), or they can get hot and beat anybody. Their worst shooting outing of the year was at UCLA last night... and they were within striking distance the entire game.

3. We need more data to say this is consistent and not just because BYU is poor at defense. But this team could beat anybody or lose to anybody.


It's too early to make any conclusions about BYU, but the LBSU win was a good win IMHO, we got them on a GOOD shooting night and still pulled it out.

Final Conclusion about what this means about BYU:

It just means that the win being so close does NOT mean we're a bad team. It doesn't necessarily mean we're a good team either, but we held off LBSU on a great shooting night.


I've been saying it for weeks, but we'll learn a lot about this BYU team tonight. A loss doesn't mean we're necessarily bad, but we should be able to see who can actually score against good teams (Can Fischer? Can Halford?) and where we'll score. We'll either get consistent production from Fischer as a scorer and not just a shooter, or not. We should learn that tonight, if not over this next week.

Also, we should see if our big guys can defend a solid low-post attack.