I love watching teams that make the extra pass and find the open guy and take the right shot and then get back and play defense. Lasts year’s team actually made strides in playing that brand of basketball.
Hearing they are going back to picking up the pace gets me excited for another 3rd place finish in the WCC. Why? Because we will lose to teams shouldn’t. We feed them so many extra possessions by shooting the ball 5 seconds into the shot clock and then the defense is not set up because the best player for Santa Clara, Portland, Pacific, Pepperdine, LMU, SF, is leading a fast break the other way and is going to get a layup or draw the attention of the defense and find a wide open shooter in the corner that will have the game of his life because he is wide open. We do score more points with fast tempo, but the 10 point leads mean nothing and vanish in less than 2 minutes because we are a 1 pass and a shot kind of team. I think up tempo is a great tool to have in your pocket and use it in games to build a lead or erase a lead, but a terrible idea for BYU to make it the focus of the offense. I would rather the mentality be focused beating a team one possession at a time and not focused on simply trying to outscore them and run them off the floor. You lose accountability and discipline with the fast tempo. We are not the Golden State Warriors and if we would stop trying to run their offense and play balanced basketball, where our athletes focus on taking care of business both ends of the floor, we might not drop games to Portland and Pepperdine and actually contend in the conference.