...when we beat Utah he did a nice job for stretches defending Timmy Allen. Same with the win vs Pepperdine against Kessler Edwards. Edwards was coming off of a huge 37 pt game prior to playing BYU and despite Edwards being 6’8” and bouncy, Knell did a good job of staying in front of him and adding some difficulty to the looks Edwards was getting.

If you compare several defensive metrics you’ll see that Knell’s metrics are very comparable to George, Johnson and Harding and in several cases he grades as a better defender (slightly in most metrics).

I think the notion that Knell is not a good defender is old and also needs to be put to rest. He was learning to defend his freshman year coming off a 2 yr lay-off (mission). Even with that he showed signs of improvement as the season wore on. This year he’s shown himself to be a competent defender.