Weber State basketball hosts BYU looking for bounce-back effort
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- Weber State guard Zahir Porter (0) challenges BYU center Matt Haarms (3) at the rim during a game Dec. 23, 2020, at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City. Porter drew a foul on the play. BYU won 87-79.
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- BYU guard Alex Barcello (13) shoots as Utah State forward Justin Bean (34) defends in the first half during an NCAA college basketball game Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021, in Provo, Utah. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
A lot has changed since Weber State and BYU faced off in men’s basketball one year ago.
A capacity-restricted crowd at Vivint Arena saw a sharpshooting BYU team start 7-foot-3 Matt Haarms and 6-foot-10 Kolby Lee in the post, countered by 6-foot-10 senior transfers Cody Carlson and Dontay Bassett for Weber State.
Haarms finished college basketball, and Lee saw his role diminish into nothing and left the team at the season’s conclusion. Bassett has taken the court only twice this season after working through health and conditioning roadblocks, and Carlson started the first nine games before not playing Wednesday in a loss to Utah State.
BYU is a far cry from its top-flight shooting teams of the past two seasons and, to boot, has lost two starting centers this season: 6-foot-11 Richard Harward may have passed out during the team’s exhibition game to open the season and was later discovered to have a heart condition that has caused him to step away for this season; and, 6-foot-9 Gavin Baxter played seven games before suffering a season-ending knee injury against Utah Valley.
So when the Wildcats and Cougars tip off at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Dee Events Center, things will look quite different.
BYU doesn’t shoot the 3 nearly as well as had become customary and plays a slow, deliberate offense consistently in search of the perfect shot. For the most part, that’s worked: senior guard Alex Barcello (19.4 points per game) orchestrates the unit to high efficiency, Milwaukee transfer Te’Jon Lucas (11.3 ppg) has started to find his role and score the ball, and the Cougars create points.
It helps that BYU (8-2) is good at everything defensively except causing turnovers and sending opponents to the free-throw line too frequently — both of which are strengths of Weber State’s offense. The Wildcats (9-2) are 70th in free-throw rate and 42nd in turnover percentage in games against Division I opponents. WSU hasn’t committed more than 12 turnovers in a game since winning at Duquesne in the season’s second contest and gave it up just nine times against USU.
Weber State will try to bounce back from a 95-80 loss to Utah State in which they got down 10-0 early and played to an 85-80 margin over the final 37 minutes.
“We’re playing good teams right now, we can’t just let ourselves get holes like that,” WSU forward Dillon Jones said. “If we dig a hole in the first half, it’s kind of hard to overcome … we can’t get in holes like that defensively.”
One potentially fascinating component of Saturday’s game will be matchups in the post.
BYU has been starting 6-foot-6 true freshman Fousseyni Traore (7.0 points, 6.1 rebounds per game) at center. He’s been a pleasant surprise for the Cougars, with a wingspan that allows him to play much bigger than his height and a solid feel for the game. Think Charles Barkley with longer arms but less bounce.
The Wildcats started 6-foot-10 true freshman Alex Tew on Wednesday, who, after playing solid backup minutes to that point, looked a touch out of his element against Utah State. Carlson didn’t play after struggling a bit to rebound and shoot from deep, and Bassett is working his way back.
Searching for production at the center spot, could WSU start the experienced Michal Kozak and try to win the small-ball matchup by speeding up the deliberate Cougars? Or could they, for instance, start the experienced, skilled Bassett against the youth of Traore and fellow true freshman center Atiki Ally Atiki, and unleash a mismatch to jumpstart a team that, offensively, has usually started games slowly?
The other post matchup is 6-foot-6 Dillon Jones against 6-foot-8 Caleb Lohner, each rather unique players at the forward spot in college basketball.
Lohner (7.0 points, 6.8 rebounds per game) has struggled to find his offensive groove this season but is a rebounding monster (one-third of his rebounds are on the offensive glass), which could pose problems for a WSU team that can rebound but has lapsed on the glass in stretches.
Jones (12.8 points, 10.4 rebounds per game) is simply a mismatch for most teams, with an ability to drive and score or operate with his back to the basket and score, or set up interior buckets for someone else.
STREAKS AT STAKE
BYU was a bit outclassed and lost last weekend in a neutral-site game against Creighton. The Cougars have never lost consecutive regular-season games under head coach Mark Pope.
Weber State won the last matchup in Ogden 113-103; BYU hasn’t lost consecutive times in Ogden since a four-game losing streak from 1992-98.
TV & RADIO
Saturday’s 6 p.m. tipoff will air on KJZZ in Utah, provided they don’t have the technical difficulties of Wednesday that kept the game from airing until halftime. It will also stream on the ESPN+ subscription service, with Dave Fox, Lance Allred and Tim LaComb on the call.
Weber State’s radio call goes out on 103.1 FM with Steve Klauke and David Patten; BYU’s radio call will be on 102.7 FM/1160 AM with Jason Shepherd and Mark Durrant on the call, as BYU voice Greg Wrubell will be in Louisiana to call BYU football’s bowl game that day.
