Next Season. What, already?

NoPoNeighbor wrote:I haven't seen K. Bailey in any of these offseason workout/camp/etc photos over the past couple of months. Is he on campus working out with the team?

Great to have all 15 Pilots back on campus. Glad NCAA lets us work w/them on court. Ideal for those of us who love to teach the game.

mattywizz wrote:It works even easier if you put them on the tractor they were designed for.

dholcombe wrote:Kevin was in yesterdays facebook photos...feel better now?

Every team has some big questions heading into the 2012-13 season.

BYU is no different. Noah Hartsock is gone. Charles Abouo is gone. Demarcus Harrison is on mission and Tyler Haws returns from mission.

They have made six straight NCAA Tournaments, a school record, but were holding their breath as the final names came down.

Here are the big three questions facing BYU this season:

What will BYU get out of the center spot?

Nate Austin would seem to be the natural choice to start at center without Noah Hartsock around. The rising sophomore averaged four points and nearly four rebounds in only 12 minutes.
But he was incredibly foul-prone. Austin fouled out a team-high six times. Six.

This could prove a problem against teams with a offensive-minded center. Saint Mary’s Brad Waldow and Gonzaga’s Sam Dower come to mind.

Brandon Davies could slide over against these teams to provide a bit more of a physical presence down low. 6-foot-11 rising sophomore Ian Harward could also see minutes there after not getting into a single game in 2011-12.

Which Matt Carlino will we see more often? Good or bad Carlino?

For the sanity of the fandom in Provo, I would hope good Carlino but how likely that is to happen is tough to tell.

The good Carlino had incredible stretches but that success could not be sustained. As the season wore on, the bad Carlino appeared more and more often. It was only his first college basketball season and maybe he just got tired. He will have to make adjustments as the league began to make against him last season.

Expect to see better, more controlled performances from Carlino but the 3-for-12 game will still happen.

Straight answer: More good Carlino.

Will they make a seventh straight trip to the NCAA Tournament?

Replacing Noah Hartsock and Charles Abouo will be hard. Nobody is expecting it to be easy. That difficulty to fill those holes could be to the detriment of the Cougars’ early season success.
And remember, BYU barely got in last season and had to play in the 14-seed play-in game. This year could be tougher.

What BYU needs to do is avoid the RPI pitfalls that they have, not only in conference but out of it.

The Cougars struggled more than many originally expected coming into the WCC and some of those teams have continued to improve just by attrition. Let’s safely say they get nine wins without the games against Saint Mary’s or Gonzaga (Pepperdine twice, Portland twice, San Diego once, LMU once, USF twice, Santa Clara once).

San Diego, LMU, and Santa Clara will scary teams for those with aspirations of March basketball. Don’t expect any of them to have a quality RPI but they will give teams a fight. A loss to any one of them, while locally may not be seen as a “bad” loss, could be seen as bad in the eyes of the selection committee.

But for argument’s sake let’s say they get 11 wins (11-5) in conference. Safe bet they get one win in the WCC Tournament, so we have 12 (12-5).

BYU’s OOC is riddled with winnable games and should have no problem getting 12 more (24-5) but they still have some games that could provide some problems. They will face Baylor, Virginia Tech, Utah State, Iowa State, and then play two of the following: Saint Joseph’s, Notre Dame, or Florida State.

They need a marquee win, which really eluded them last season.

Can they get it and who will it be? But then how good will Iowa State be without Royce White? How good is Baylor without Perry Jones and Quincy Acy?

NCAA Tournament? It’s no lock and BYU is probably bubble bound.

Best-case scenario: Portland coach Eric Reveno is one of his profession's most proficient Twitter users, and anyone who actually gets Twitter is guaranteed to warm the cockles of this quasi-tech geek/basketball writer's heart. On the court, unfortunately, things are not looking quite as good. The Pilots finished just 7-24 last season, including a 3-13 record in WCC play. The good news? With leading scorers Tim Douglas, Kevin Bailey and Ryan Nicholas all back, some improvement should be expected. But how much? Five league wins? Six?

Worst-case scenario: The odds of another seven-win-or-worse season seems pretty remote, but anything in single-digit wins territory should count as a worst-case scenario for any program, even one in this lowly position.

Portland: Tim Douglas
Portland won just seven games last season, but the good news is it returns its top three scorers -- Ryan Nicholas, Kevin Bailey and Douglas. All three are important to better results in 2012-13, but the point guard Douglas led the team in usage rate and will have the ball in his hands just as often this season.

PurpleGeezer wrote:...so I think the key is a point who can just do what is required of a point. If he can do that, any other offensive production he gives us is a bonus.

DJ Sherman wrote:This makes the Most Important Player somewhat awkward :

Portland: Tim Douglas
Portland won just seven games last season, but the good news is it returns its top three scorers -- Ryan Nicholas, Kevin Bailey and Douglas. All three are important to better results in 2012-13, but the point guard Douglas led the team in usage rate and will have the ball in his hands just as often this season.

To Brennan's defense, the announcement was made the day before the Sweet 16, so it's easy to forget about the schools not in contention.

Since Tim has transferred, who is your replacement for "most important player"? Nicholas the veteran; van De Mars, the Gouda, Netherlands native, the recovered Barker, the PG Committee ruled by Oskar Reinfelds the result of Riga, or someone else?

Stonehouse wrote:In my mind, I feel like I "know" what I'm going to get from Nicholas, Van der Mars, and Bailey. There's room for improvement and development, absolutely (especially with VDM and Bailey), but I feel like they are solid and reliable.

Stonehouse wrote:Carr proved he can handle the ball, and really came around as a shooter as the season progressed. He was a typical freshman - flashes early, some struggles adjusting to D1, but showing true progress by the end of the year. He's a very capable cog in the wheel, and I expect him to start at PG..

Stonehouse wrote:The big wild cards are Tanner Riley and Dorian Cason. If those two get locked in and consistently producing, we're a totally different team with multiple scoring options.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Not sure if this has already been reported, but the game at WSU is set for December 1st. The Cougars recently released their full schedule. The UP game will the 3rd of 6 straight home games for WSU, sandwiched between Idaho on 11/28 and Gonzaga on 12/5.

DoubleDipper wrote:

UP will play at WSU on Saturday, UNLV at home on Wednesday, and then a 9:00 AM PST in Lexington against UK.

DoubleDipper wrote:I just saw Concordia Portland's basketball schedule.....it shows Concordia playing at UP on Saturday November 17 in Concordia's eighth game of their season.

Hmmm, it is on their website, but still, that seems a strange time for us to be playing them. I think we should wait to see OUR schedule!

NoPoNeighbor wrote:

DoubleDipper wrote:I just saw Concordia Portland's basketball schedule.....it shows Concordia playing at UP on Saturday November 17 in Concordia's eighth game of their season.

Hmmm, it is on their website, but still, that seems a strange time for us to be playing them. I think we should wait to see OUR schedule!

Concordia now lists this as an exhibition at UP on Oct. 27.

NoPoNeighbor wrote:Concordia now lists this as an exhibition at UP on Oct. 27.

DoubleDipper wrote:And it looks like the always tough Concordia Irvine will play a Sunday afternoon game at UP on November 4th.

As I recall, we barely squeaked by them in OT last year.

RipCityPilot wrote:Did anyone go watch that strongman competition they had?

Youth is the story again for Portland but it now holds a known commodity in Ryan Nicholas.

But what else can the Pilots bring to the table?

This will be the question in the preseason and in the regular season. Many of Portland's players do not have a ton of experience and 10 of them have three years of eligibility left.

Here are some guys that could make the difference:

Will Thomas van der Mars take the next step?

It can sometimes take big men a little longer to mature and develop. This could very well be the case for Thomas van der Mars.

The rising sophomore showed flashes of what he could end up being but, as the season wore on, remained inconsistent. He scored in double figures in four of six games, which started off with a career-high 18 points at Saint Mary’s.

But van der Mars did not score more than nine in the final eight games.

He shot 53 percent from the field and he grabbed 5.4 rebounds in 25 minutes per game. His numbers should improve but the question is by how much.

A brutal out-of-conference schedule crushed the Pilots last season. Will it be better this season?
Eric Reveno admitted after the season that the treacherous preseason schedule a year ago hurt his team.

The Pilots had the ninth toughest out-of-conference schedule in college basketball, including six teams with an RPI in the top-100. Portland went 0-6 in those games and gave up an average of 80.6 points per game.

The defending national champion Kentucky Wildcats, who Portland played last season, is on the schedule again. Portland will also take part in the Continental Tire Las Vegas Classic along with Virginia Tech, Colorado State, and Bradley.

It will serve the Pilots to have a bit of a balance in the OOC this time around and build some confidence before they hit WCC play.

Who will step up?

The only sure thing for the Pilots is Ryan Nicholas, which begs the question. Where will the Pilots get additional help from?

Kevin Bailey should provide some relief for Nicholas. His 9.5 points per game last season is second best returning to the Pilots and he should see his minutes per game rise after playing just more than 21 per game.

Tanner Riley could also make a big step forward. Riley shot 34 percent from three-point range, which will be critical for a team that shot a mere 30 percent from distance a year ago.