Pilots @ BYU - Saturday 1/22 @ 6pm

Pilots venture into Utah and the Marriott Center with its 19K fans. Never an easy task, and BYU is playing well, currently 4-1 with wins over SMC and USF. They are led by Alex Barcello, a 6'2" G who has played in 130 college games, two years at Arizona and now in his third year at BYU. He is averaging 17 ppg and shooting 46% from 3P range.

The game is broadcast on BYUTV, channel 234 on Comcast in Portland. I always find the BYU announcers to do a good job, so the recent complaints about watching away games should not apply.

BYU favored by 20.

That corner three has been open all game long for BYU.

Odd to see this Pilots team struggle from the line, too.

Well, it was less than 20 points. Great show for 18 minutes.

I watched the game with the audio off because I was simultaneously watching the 49ers game, so don't know if there was an explanation of why Silveira did not play except we know he went off in the first minute of the LMU game.

Interesting that Nikola Milosevic got his first minutes of the season and came into the game ahead of Yaru.  It is obvious Coach Legans is finding his bench too short, otherwise Nikola would have likely taken a redshirt year.

Skylar Wilson did not travel with the team to California or Utah, and I am speculating he will be the first to enter the portal this spring.

Considering the opponent and the Marriott Center, I thought the guys performed well.  Face it, BYU is good, and UP is still a couple of years away from being competitive against Quad 1 teams.

DoubleDipper wrote:I watched the game with the audio off because I was simultaneously watching the 49ers game, so don't know if there was an explanation of why Silveira did not play except we know he went off in the first minute of the LMU game.

The announcers were talking about the international aspect of the team and mentioned Silveira as being injured.

DoubleDipper wrote:Interesting that Nikola Milosevic got his first minutes of the season and came into the game ahead of Yaru.  It is obvious Coach Legans is finding his bench too short, otherwise Nikola would have likely taken a redshirt year.

That was the most interesting part of this game to me. For Milosevic to slot in  ahead of Yaru was noteworthy. I would have thought he would have to play his way up the depth chart after missing all that time, but he was essentially the backup PG in his first game back.

I thought it was interesting that Vucinic played 13 minutes, which is more time than he had in the other 3 conference games combined.

Wrubell is BYU's radio play-by-play.

DoubleDipper wrote:Considering the opponent and the Marriott Center, I thought the guys performed well.

I have to remind myself sometimes that the only holdovers from the eternal darkness of the Terry Porter era are two walkons, the UP admin staff, and a small roster of slightly crazy Pilot Nation posters.

Yeah, it was another loss.

But it was a loss on the road to a pretty damned good team. As up76-I-can-never-get-the-numbers-right said, it was a great show for 18 minutes. But it was more than that, they actually had a response after BYU went on that 15-2 run around halftime. It was a 7 point game with 7 minutes to go and the Pilots had three chances to draw even closer before BYU finally put it away.

Everyone that still bothers to post here is tired of losing. But it's clearly evident that the vibe around this team is completely different this year and, for the most part, it's been a lot of fun to watch.

People outside of UP are noticing. This is BYU's radio guy (who, incidentally, is a great follow on Twitter for WCC-related matters).

@GregWrubell wrote:Anyone who has watched Portland this season can see that this is not the same program that complied six straight losing seasons under the previous regime.

New coach Shantay Legans brought in good players and the wins should come. I was impressed by the Pilots' play last night.

As we know, it was only five straight losing seasons under Porter. Sure felt like longer though!

Go Pilots.

See, I like Sound Voltex's strategy. He posted the same Wrubell tweet, but without blathering for 300 words leading up to it like I did.

Dean Murdoch wrote:See, I like Sound Voltex's strategy. He posted the same Wrubell tweet, but without blathering for 300 words leading up to it like I did.

But who got the "likes?"

You did. On some message boards, blathering is encouraged. This is one of those message boards. #extraeffort