1. Anson Winder May Be the Streakiest Shooter of All-Time
I've waxed philosophical on Twitter recently about the playing time problem facing BYU now that they have three point guards in the mix — and it seemed, at least up until tonight, that Anson Winder had become the odd-man out. I advocated for moving him back to shooting guard — looks like Rose had a similar thought — but I also said he couldn't be given big minutes until he proved he could force the opposition to guard him on the offensive end of the floor. After all, Winder was shooting an anemic 24 percent from deep and teams were starting to dare him to shoot. The results weren't pretty.
Then tonight happened.
After failing to even hit the rim in his last few outings, Winder came off the bench firing in the first half against Buffalo. The game had been ugly to that point, BYU had struggled offensively, and Damarcus Harrison was out with an ankle injury, providing Winder with a perfect opportunity to redeem himself.
The redshirt freshman proceeded to hit his first six shots, five of which were 3s.
That was unexpected.
To Winder, it must have felt like he was throwing the ball into the Grand Canyon. The guy literally could not miss. He finished with 20 points on 7-for-8 shooting (including 6-for-7 from beyond the arc) in — get this — only 19 minutes of playing time. He may literally be lying in a grungy alley in Tijuana with Mischa Barton right now, that's how unconscious he was tonight.
It was obviously a great game for Anson, and hopefully it will help his confidence moving forward — which, if we're being honest, is what's most important here. I'm glad he had a nice game against the Buffalo Bulls in mid-December, but if he is an offensive liability against good teams in February and March, there won't be many opportunities for him to get minutes.
Long story short? Unbelievable night — now keep stroking it, young fella!
2. Brock Zylstra's Wildly Inconsistent Adventure
I can't quite put a finger on Brock Zylstra. The guy is kind of all over the place, and his play fluctuates wildly from game to game. Tonight, he was stellar, finishing with a career-high 26 points and essentially carrying the BYU offense for much of the evening. He shot well, he got to the rim in transition, and he made his free throws — what more can anyone ask?
I, for one, would ask that this happen more often.
There's no doubt Brock can score — we'd already seen that a few times this season. The question is whether he will. He has a way of disappearing for games at a time, making no discernible impact on the floor whatsoever. But when Zylstra is on, he's on, which leads to random explosions like his 23-point outing at Northern Arizona and his 26-point effort tonight. There's just no telling which Brock is going to show up.
I suppose this is probably not the worst thing in the world. Zylstra isn't this team's number one option, and BYU has a lot of depth and a number of different scorers who can step up when needed. That's part of what makes this team so intriguing. However, I'd still like to see Brock find a middle ground. So far this season, he has swung only to the extremes — he either scores 20+ or he scores 4.
There has to be a place in between those two poles where he can find some consistency and, at the very least, avoid becoming just another warm body on the floor. Brock's better than that — he proved that again tonight. Now he just needs to show it again on Thursday.
3. The Injury Bug Strikes Again
The most important part of this game may have nothing to do with Anson Winder's renewed confidence or Brock Zylstra's career-high scoring mark or anything else that happened. Unfortunately, this game could end up being defined by a fluke play in the last 30 seconds of a blowout.
When Nate Austin went down hard on his left elbow while trying to defend a garbage-time alley-oop, it didn't look good. He screamed and writhed in pain on the floor, clutching his elbow like his forearm had just been amputated without anesthetic. I couldn't even watch the multiple replays of the fall — it was not a pretty sight. And to make matters worse, a potentially lengthy injury would only add Austin to the Cougars' laundry listed of sidelined players.
With Chris Collinsworth and Stephen Rogers already out for extended periods of time with knee problems, Rose couldn't afford to lose another big man. That's precisely why the Austin injury could prove to be such a crucial blow. Now, instead of being loaded with front court depth, BYU's forward rotation consists of only three players — Brandon Davies, Noah Hartsock and Josh Sharp. As we saw tonight, both Davies and Hartsock have a propensity to get in foul trouble early, and Sharp is nowhere close to being ready for primetime. I'm sure you can appreciate the problem at hand.
Thankfully, Rose revealed in his post-game comments that Austin's elbow didn't dislocate and that he only banged it on the floor "really hard." While every Cougar fan should go say 10 Mormon Hail Marys in response to that nugget of news, we're still not out of the woods. Elbows are a sensitive area that also happen to be pretty important to playing basketball — especially for a big man like Austin. If he has significant bone bruising that lingers for the foreseeable future, that tenderness could affect his play or (even worse) potentially hold him out of action altogether.
That's the last thing this team needs right now, particularly with the consistently positive contributions the freshman has been making in his reserve role. Austin has become one of those "glue guys" that does all the little things a team needs to win — he draws charges, he scraps in the paint, he grabs boards, and he dives for loose balls. Throw in his pretty jump shot and the extra five fouls he puts at Rose's disposal, and it becomes easy to see why losing him for more than a game or two would be a huge setback for BYU.
Unfortunately, there's really no immediate answer for this situation. It's all a big wait-and-see game, but everyone in Cougar Nation should be keeping their fingers crossed that Nate Austin wakes up with a magically uninjured elbow tomorrow morning.
Stray Observations
- Charles Abouo was awful for most of the night, and was also the main culprit behind BYU's embarrassing start to the game. He somehow managed to turn it over twice and give Buffalo's best shooter two wide-open looks all in the first four possessions, prompting Rose to call a timeout and do something I've never really seen him do — scream like a maniac. He got right in Abouo's face for the entire timeout and, if my lip-reading skills are to be trusted (and they may not be), ended his dressing-down by yelling, "What's wrong with you?" Tonight, a lot was wrong with Charles. He never really got in a rhythm offensively and he couldn't handle the ball to save his life. To his credit, he played hard through it all, but it was a really rough one to watch.
- If anybody reading this has expressed disappointment with Matt Carlino over his performance tonight, please do us all a favor and lower your impossibly high standards. Yes, Carlino had a great debut against Baylor. But it's essential that everyone remembers what we're dealing with here — an extremely talented young point guard who was playing just his second collegiate game. Sure, Carlino's shot was way off tonight. He finally hit a few in the second half, but he was ice cold from everywhere for most of the game. And here's the important part: unlike some scorers who would continue to try to shoot themselves out of a slump (here's looking at you, Tavernari!), Carlino knew when to pull back and play his position. He stopped looking for his own shot and started distributing the ball to his teammates. The result? Carlino grabbed a double-double, finishing with 10 points, 11 assists and 7 rebounds — and that's all on a bad shooting night! He may have turned it over a few too many times (again, freshman point guard syndrome), but if you're honestly disappointed with that performance, I don't know what to do for you.
- Brandon Davies went back to being invisible again. A lot of that was probably due to him getting in foul trouble early and playing limited minutes as a result, but he never really established himself on offense once he got back on the floor. You can't have one of your two best players taking only 3 shots in an entire game. That shouldn't happen, especially when that guy is a (allegedly) dominant post player. A bad regression from his excellent performance against Baylor.
- Silver lining? Davies did take 2 or 3 charges, while Austin added 3 more. At this point, those two guys are turning getting run over into an artform.
- Noah Hartsock's night got off to a slow start due to foul trouble, but he rallied nicely for a solid 16 points on 7-for-9 shooting. Really, this shouldn't surprise anyone. No matter what happens, Noah always seems to find a way to get his 15-20 points. If it ever doesn't happen, everyone break out the 18 years of food storage in your basement/bomb shelter, because the end is probably near.
UP NEXT: BYU vs. UC-Santa Barbara, Thursday at 9:00 p.m. EST
Photo: BYU Photo
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