HB Arnett's 801 372 - 0819 <mailto:hbarnett@fiber.net> hbarnett@fiber.net 1391 West 800 South - Orem, Utah 84058 Vol. 35, Issue 20 - December 8, 2014 Click Here To Order Or Renew Your Subscriptions <http://cougarclicks.com/product/Order-Cougar-Sportsline?ID=3173> 3 B's of BYU Football Bowl, Bowlsby and Bronco One. BYU has officially been bowl bound for three weeks. The Cougars accepted a bid to play in the inaugural Miami Beach Bowl immediately after dispatching UNLV in Provo on November 15. Now the Cougars officially have somebody to play. BYU will lineup against American Athletic Conference Co-Champ Memphis. The Tigers finished AAC league play with a 7-1 record in a three-way tie with Cincinnati and East Carolina. Their only loss in conference action was against Houston. The game was in Memphis and the final was 28-24. In case you forgot, BYU beat that same Houston team in Provo 33-25. The two team's schedules also crossed paths two other times this season. Both the Cougars and Tigers played Connecticut and Middle Tennessee State. BYU beat UConn in their first game of the season 35-10 and Memphis beat the Huskies in their last game of the season 41-10. Both games were on the road. Against the Blue Raiders, Memphis defeated MTSU 36-17 in Memphis and BYU beat the same team 27-7 at Murfreesboro. The other two losses for the Tigers took place early in the season when they were beat in a shootout at UCLA 42-35 and lost at Ole Miss 24-7. The Tigers have a balanced offense. They average 191.8 yards rushing per game and throw it for 230.6 yards per outing. Their leading rusher is Brandon Hayes who racked up 900 yards this season for 5.2 yards per pop each time he touched the ball. Paxton Lynch threw the ball for 2725 yards for the Tigers this season and completed 64 percent of his passes. He also threw for 18 touchdowns. My initial reaction is that this should be an offensive shootout between the Cougars and Tigers and a re-run of the BYU-Cal game. Look for lots of offense. Could be the last team with the ball wins. Two. Big 12 conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby is in defensive back mode. He is backpedalling bigtime after his conference was left out of the initial 4-team playoff model. After a season of touting "One True Champion", Baylor and TCU are left standing at the college football candy store looking in and licking the window of what could have been. Bowlsby said Sunday his conference was penalized by the College Football Playoff committee for not having a championship game. "It would have been nice to be told that ahead of time," Bowlsby said of the committee to ESPN. "It's clear (not having a title game) penalized us. ... That will cause us to go back to the drawing board a little bit and whether we need to figure out a different model." All of which will have BYU football fans back in the feeding frenzy mode of hoping that BYU will somehow merit an invite along with another team to accommodate a championship game for the Big 12. BYU's name is still mentioned prominently as one of only a few teams that could somehow be invited to the Big 12 party. That remains to be seen, but the best part of this speculation is that BYU and a potential Big 12 deal is worth at least a month's worth of copy during the Christmas holiday when copy is hard to come by for this newsletter. Thanks Bob for the back pedal. Three. We know at times Bronco Mendenhall can be brusque and boorish in his public relations dealings with the media and BYU's fan base. But can he be a Beaver? In case you missed it, Click here <http://byucougars.com/video/m-football/bronco-go-webisode-12> for Bronco's assessment of the media starting at the 11:30 mark. Incidentally I consider this interview the best ever done by Bronco so be sure to listen and watch it in its entirety. And in another in case you missed it, Oregon State is looking for a new head coach. Because Bronco played for the Beavers and coached for the Beavers, there is some speculation that he would be a good candidate for replacing Mike Riley, one of his good friends, who left Corvallis to take the head job at Nebraska. Click here <http://www.oregonlive.com/beavers/index.ssf/2014/12/who_is_next_at_oregon_s tate_be.html> to see what the Oregon press is saying about Bronco and the Beaver opening. Literally. If Utah Can Hold Haws They Will Win Larry Krystkowiak quickly figured out what Jim Boylen never could. To beat BYU, you need to mug and hug the Cougars' best offensive player. To beat the Cougars Wednesday night in the Marriott Center, Utah will have to hold down Tyler Haws.literally. Holding has been a defensive staple of the Utes in football for years in football. Defensive backs press receivers at the line of scrimmage and mug and hug them, almost every play. That's my opinion. If you hold on every down, eventually officials will get tired of calling it and you are free to mug and hug all you want. The same is true in basketball, especially with BYU's best offensive players. I saw it with Jimmer his senior season. Unless the defender drew blood, there was no foul. Go back and look at the tapes of BYU's two losses this season. Both would have been great episodes for a made for TV special: Muggings in Maui. Here's the deal. To mug successfully, a team needs to have enough fouls to give until game officials get tired of calling every infraction. Once that happens, Haws is history. Utah has enough bodies and fouls to give to hold Haws down. You can go to the bank on it. If Dave Rose wants to be cashing the winning ticket in this rivalry game, he needs to have players not named Haws make the Utes pay for their defensive strategy. That sounds simple enough. But who are those players? The most likely candidate would be Kyle Collinsworth. In his first two years, the mug and hug defense would work on the 6-6 point guard because while he could go to the basket at will, he had trouble at the free throw line. That appears to have changed this season. Collinsworth is currently shooting .762 from the stripe this season. Next to Haws, Collinsworth is now second in free throw shooting on the team with those who have shot more than 15 attempts from the stripe. You may expect BYU to have enough three point shooting to run the Utes out of the gym with guys like Chase Fischer and Anson Winder. I don't. Three point shooting will not determine the winner of this contest. The game will be a battle of bigs. BYU has the numbers in this one with lots of bodies, but Utah has the inside skills to score. It will be a case of BYU taking a page from Utah's defensive scheme and fouling and then fouling some more inside the paint to force the Utes to beat the Cougars from beyond the arc or at the free throw line. If Rose can find a post player that can give him 10 points or more in this game, the Cougars should win this contest. Finding points in the paint for BYU won't be easy. If you haven't looked recently, here are the current scoring stats for BYU bigs this year" Nate Austin - 3.3 Isaac Neilson - 5.3 Luke Worthington - 3.7 Corbin Kaufusi - 3.4 Dalton Nixon - 3.0 Josh Sharp - 1.7 Ryan Andrus - .8 It will still be Haws and Collinsworth that will have to produce this win for BYU. Hugged or mugged, Haws will have to score. He will have to if the Cougars are going to win. Despite hugging and mugging, I expect Haws to keep on chugging. I call the Cougars in this one. I'll Take BYU's Best Coach for $1000, Alex Jeopardy and BYU alum Ken Jennings made for some great TV. But I wonder what Jennings would answer if the category and question on the popular television game show was who is BYU's Best Coach? Empirically speaking, Jennings wouldn't be writing the names of Bronco Mendenhall or Dave Rose as his final answer to the bonus question. The only name that Jennings would be jotting down is one that most BYU fans have probably never heard of. So write this down. Shawn Olmstead. He is the current BYU Women's Volleyball Coach. This year he has led BYU to their third consecutive Sweet 16 appearance in NCAA tournament action. The Lady Cougars are currently 27-4 and counting after capturing the WCC conference title. They now face No. 6 ranked Florida State on Friday in Seattle. Mendenhall and Rose only hope that their resume could resemble Olmstead's after four seasons at the BYU helm. Years as Head Coach * 2011-Present * Led BYU to a 24-7 overall record in 2013, including a second-consecutive round of 16 NCAA tournament finish * Finished the 2013 season with a 15-3 WCC record that included a 10-0 start to conference play * His players received an All-American honor, two all-region honors, four All-WCC honors and WCC Freshman of the Year in 2013 * Led the Cougars to their first conference title since 2005, their best record since 1998 at 28-4 and a finish in the round of 16 at the NCAA tournament, the team's first showing at the tournament since 2007, during the 2012 season * Coached four All-Americans, including AVCA first teamer Jennifer Hamson, in 2012 * Named 2012 West Coast Conference Coach of the Year and 2012 Pacific Region Coach of the Year * His players received four all-region honors, WCC Player of the Year, WCC Freshman of the Year, WCC Co-Defensive Player of the Year, four All-WCC honors and two WCC All-Freshman honors in 2012 * Led Cougars to 21-9 (10-6 WCC) season in 2011 * Coached players to three all-conference honors, three academic all-conference honors, one all-region accolade and one AVCA All-America citation in 2011 * Helped the team to a third-place finish in BYU's first season in the West Coast Conference * Led the Cougars to their first 20-plus win season since 2007 in the 2011 season * Coached the team to a win against Utah in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 Deseret First Duel Juco Signings Just Around the Corner Midyear JC transfers in football can start signing their names to the dotted line in 9 days. The signing dates for the eligible midyear transfers are from December 17 to January 15. BYU was thinking that they would be able to ink Trent Hosick this month, but the Missouri transfer by way of Arizona Western, is now an extremely hot commodity as a quarterback. After committing to the Cougars late last summer, his performance on the field at AWC has some major programs now seeking his services as a read option quarterback. Those looking include Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Auburn. BYU is still hoping to sign and land Khari Vanderbilt, the 6-2, 195 pound safety from San Jose City College. Vanderbilt committed to the Cougars in the summer, but scared BYU when he took an official visit to Cal when the Cougars were in town. He still looks solid for BYU. Another juco who will likely sign with BYU is 6-6 290 pound offensive tackle Garett Bolles from Snow College. He has three years to play at the next level. He prepped at Westlake HS in Lehi locally and started at Snow after returning from an LDS mission. Here are some other possible juco names that BYU has looked at during this past season. Jonah Trinnaman, WR Snow College. Originally committed to Utah State out of American Fork HS. Led Snow in receiving this past season. Juco DB's.Thadeus Daniels, Cerritos, CA; Antoine Albert, Diablo Valley; Jayshawn Lowe, Santa Monica. Also look for BYU to pursue a juco running back for next season. TV Timetable BYU vs. Weber State (W BBall) Tuesday, December 9 at Provo Tipoff: 7:00 pm MST TV: BYUtv BYU vs. Utah Wednesday, December 10 at Provo Tipoff: 7:00 pm MST TV: ESPNU BYU vs. Florida State (W Volleyball) Friday, December 12 at Seattle Match Start: 5:00 pm MST TV: ESPN3 If BYU Wins. BYU vs. Washington or Nebraska Saturday, December 13 at Seattle Match Start: 9:00 pm MST TV: ESPNU BYU vs. Utah (W BBall) Saturday, December 13 at Salt Lake Tipoff: Noon TV: Pac 12 Network BYU vs. Weber State Saturday, December 13 at Ogden Tipoff: 7:00 pm MST TV: KJZZ (local Utah Station) BYU vs. Stanford Saturday, December 20 at Provo Tipoff: 9:00 pm MST TV: ESPNU BYU vs. Memphis (Miami Beach Bowl) Monday, December 22 at Miami Kickoff: Noon MST TV: ESPN BYU vs. UMass Tuesday, December 23 at Provo Tipoff: Noon MST TV: BYUtv BYU vs. Gonzaga Saturday, December 27 at Provo Tipoff: 4:00 pm MST TV: ESPN2 If you also want a PDF copy of this issue, email and request it.
