BYU Notes

Seneca Knight, an occasional starter for BYU last year who previously played 3 years at San Jose St. is transferring. Who's left in Provo?

DoubleDipper wrote:

up7587 wrote:Baxter will play for Utah.

As a walk-on, I am told.

Verbal commits says today that Baxter is a non-scholarship player. Utah also picked up a center from UCF and a power forward from Wisconsin.

BYU just announced a new women’s Basketball coach Amber Whiting to replace retiring Jeff Judkins.


https://www.deseret.com/2022/5/18/23126051/byu-womens-basketball-amber-whiting-jeff-judkins-trent-whiting

DoubleDipper wrote:

Dean Murdoch wrote:

@24_7IEBP wrote:Eastern Washington transfer Kim Aiken @k24aiken has heard from the following: New Mexico, Arizona, San Diego St, University of Portland, Fresno  State, USC, Cal Baptist.

Pretty darn good player for EWU these past three seasons...

Aiken, Jr. is VERY good!  First team All-Big Sky and Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year.

Of the seven EWU players who entered the transfer portal, Kim Aiken, Jr. and Tanner Groves, First Team All-Big Sky and the Big Sky Player of the Year, are the most likely to end up at a high-major next season.

That was from over a year ago, and as you may recall, Aiken decided to attend Arizona, but after playing in only 7 games there this past season he stepped away from the team for unknown reasons, and now he is back in the portal...still as a grad-student.

Portland had no intention of persuading him to come to The Bluff, but I am hearing he will apparently commit to BYU if they can find a way to get him admitted to grad school.

When he left EWU Aiken committed to WSU, but when it was determined his EWU education did not meet the WSU standards, he was admitted to Arizona.

Aiken is without a doubt an All-WCC caliber player, and I think BYU will somehow get him in the classroom.  

Now, if we could just get Aiken and BYU to play in the Chiles Center without their (fill in the blank) fans...

After 4 years at BYU Point guard Shaylee Gonzales has transferred to Texas.
The Reígning two time WCC POY scored 18.3 ppl for the Cougs last season coming off a knee injury. She has two years of eligibility left.

Geezaldinho wrote:After 4 years at BYU Point guard Shaylee Gonzales has transferred to Texas.
The Reígning  two time WCC POY scored 18.3 ppl for the Cougs last season coming off a knee injury. She has two years of eligibility left.

Because she entered the portal after the May 1 deadline, Gonzales will need a waiver to play immediately at UT, but because there was a coaching change at BYU, IMO the NCAA will likely look favorably upon the waiver request.

I enjoyed watching her play in the Chiles Center, and even though UP beat the Cougars this past February, that was not a game to savor because that is the game in which Haylee blew out her knee after just 13 minutes of play and Rose came to the rescue.

After the disgraceful fan behavior toward the Duke Volleyball player, worsened by Coach Heather Olmstead’s refusal to deal with the situation or apologize, the departure of BYU from the WCC can’t come soon enough. I never felt they belonged in the WCC anyway. AMF.

What is astounding to me was when the racist taunts were brought to the attention of the referees and BYU, the response was to have a police officer sit on the Duke bench, not to address the situation with the fans or clear the student section where the taunts were coming from. The NCAA has zero tolerance for inaction in its guideline,and has removal and firing, and fines for any complicity, overt or tacit, with racist or sexist behavior by any staff or coaches.

It wasn’t until the student who was being taunted’s Godmother ( a Texas Judge) tweeted with specifics that anything was done by the administration, and the BYU coach blew off a meeting afterwards that was scheduled with the player.

After it became apparent the issue wasn’t going away and after a statement by the Duke AD, the BYU AD did address the issue with BYU fans and has a statement at the beginning of the BYU broadcast of the Game with Washington State.
You can listen to the start of the apology here at the start of the rebroadcast.
https://www.byutv.org/player/2f2e3d64-708b-407c-938e-b658d490c3fd/byu-volleyball-w-washington-state-vs-byu-82722

This is a clipped version of the apology that was on last night when I listened to it, and the full apology included a tacit admission that it was more than just the one ( banned) person, but other students were involved. The full apology, addressed to BYU student in attendance, ended with the obvious “We can do better”


The next Duke game against Ryder was held in a local HS gym and not at BYU. The Ryder players showed support by wearing the Duke player’s #3 on their wrists during that game.

Before we point the finger too harshly, let’s remember the racist and sexist fiasco at the 2018 Wally awards a  that went unaddressed by Senior administration including our then President, father Poorman, who was in attendance. Junior coaches and administrators sitting in the back of the room had to finally put an end to it.

The Pilotnation thread on that is here.
https://www.pilotnation.net/t5961-2018-wally-awards?highlight=Wally+gate
There are some parallels with the BYU and UP situations and how they were handled.
We can all do better.

I agree with your comments, Geez. I was appalled by that UP incident, not to mention another from the basketball locker room a few years ago.. and probably a few more time has swept away. We can all try to do much better.

Still (maybe from the black core of my heart), I’m glad to see them leaving.

https://www.sltrib.com/sports/2022/08/30/fan-who-was-banned-by-byu-does/

And this from a student newspaper:
https://www.byucougarchronicle.org/post/exclusive-racist-comments-at-byu-volleyball-game-never-happened-sources-suggest

As the controversy continues over whether there were racial slurs, or not, South Carolina WBB has canceled their home-and-home series against BYU that was to begin this season.  

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaabk/university-of-south-carolina-cancels-games-with-byu-amid-alleged-racist-slur-incident-with-duke/ar-AA11pLtp

This article https://www.commonsense.news/p/how-the-media-fell-for-a-racism-sham is more about media failures than the racial slur incident, but these paragraphs are key:

There is no evidence that the chain of events described by Richardson and her family members occurred. There isn’t even evidence a single slur was hurled at her and her teammates, let alone a terrifying onslaught of them.

All the journalists who credulously reported on this event were wrong—and it was an embarrassing kind of wrong, because the red flags were large, numerous, and flapping loudly. Richardson and her family members reported that racial slurs had been hurled with abandon, loudly and repeatedly, in a crowded gym filled with more than 5,000 people. But the journalists covering this incident never stopped to notice how odd it was that none of these vile slurs were captured by any of the thousands of little handheld cameras in the gym at the time, nor on the bigger cameras recording the match. Nor did they find it strange that in the days following the incident, not a single other eyewitness came forward—none of Richardson’s black teammates, and none of the players for either team.

I have wondered why we never heard any of the other Duke players saying they heard the racial slurs.

For every tiny gain we occasionally make in America's fight against racism, it only takes a seemingly small incident like this, or the much larger brutish violence that took over so many of the Black Lives Matter protests, to set the country back again.

For those of us who have been part of the movement towards equality going back many years, we can only shake our collective heads at the small steps forward followed yet again by another setback.

DoubleDipper wrote:For every tiny gain we occasionally make in America's fight against racism, it only takes a seemingly small incident like this, or the much larger brutish violence that took over so many of the Black Lives Matter protests, to set the country back again.

For those of us who have been part of the movement towards equality going back many years, we can only shake our collective heads at the small steps forward followed yet again by another setback.

I think it bears mentioning that there is no movement toward "equality" in this capitalist society. Ask Elon Musk, for instance. Since the institution of the Lafer curve, with increasingly favorable taxation rates, inequality of wealth has grown notably since the 1980s. CEOs now earn more relative to their work force than they ever have.

Also noteworthy is that per my understanding Black Lives Matter did not encourage nor did its members significantly participate in acts of violence, unlike the brutish right wing reactionaries.

If you are alluding to equality before the law we have many examples even recently where that simply is not the case. Nor is there an equality of opprotunity.

We  should, as noted, aspire for a better, more just society.

The ongoing force of bigotry has many faces in our society. It resists attempts at ending it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/19/oregon-byu-anti-mormon-chant/