KY knows more about basketball than I probably know about any subject. That's my disclaimer.

General Observations
- Crowd - Man our crowd arrives late. Marriott ended up being basically full, but it was probably not until halfway through the first half. Snow, traffic, election, weeknight, all played a role. I thought energy was good, not great.
- Staff - It's WILD to see how many staffers we have. Like two full rows of humanity stand up each time out.
- Ryan Smith - There's rich boosters on the chair seats...and then there's Ryan Smith's family sitting next to the team and scorers table...the only fans on the floor on that side of the arena. Gotta love it.
- Competition - It's hard to make any grand pronouncements from a game with Central Arkansas.
- New Announcer - I think it was the old Jazz announcer doing the PA. It clearly wasn't the same guy. He mispronounced names badly (Traore, Alex Barcello on a trivia question). He didn't pause during opponent starting lineup and let the students wave to them. It was clear he was fairly unfamiliar with BYU. It was very odd. Not sure why the made the switch or if it's permanent. But not good.

The Good
- Demin and Catchings - Simply put: we've NEVER had players like that at BYU. Ever. Catchings will lead this team in scoring (note I said that BEFORE the CCU game, based on what I was hearing from practice). Demin is as good as advertised. Both are clear NBA guys.
- Knell - He's a great leader on the floor and knocks down shots.
- Keita - Athletic and amazing to watch.
- Open Threes - Could be the competition, but it felt like we got more open threes in this game than we did last year. Could be based on the actions run.
- Defense at time - We played REALLY good defense when we turned it on.
- Crawford - Not sure how many minutes he'll get, but wow he is intense when he plays.

The Concerns
- Layups - Pope's offense last year generated 6-8 very easy shots a game. KY's does not. It's a VERY NBA style with lots of on-ball pick and rolls, drive and kick, etc. There's very little cutting to the basket or motion action to generate easy buckets. The philosphy is all spacing...cutters can screw up spacing and bring defenders into the key. That's the NBA philosophy. I'm very very curious how this translates to Big 12 play.
- Post-Play - Not sure what Fouss is gonna do to help the team. It was very clear there will be almost no post game. (Again, consistent with NBA style). There is simply no back to the basket in this offense at all. I'm still convinced that Fouss will help us win a game or two in the Big 12 when things bog down, but I feel for the guy. He's elite around the hoop and I don't think he'll get many chances this year.
- Rebounding - Again, this is consistent with the NBA...very very very poor boxing out. NBA philosophy with all the threes is to Box In (Kerr talks about this alot) or just jump for the ball. NBA guys increasingly believe boxing out is pointless. We'll see if that's the case against Texas Tech in February or something.
- Poor Close Outs - We did a lot of jumping and fly bys on defense. Bad bad close outs on defense.

Overall...I think this team needs to gel. We'll learn a lot about this team Thanksgiving weekend. I'm really really curious to see what (if anything) KY will alter from his core philosophies to fit them to the college game.

Prediction: we're going to be really good. BUT we will take our lumps in conference. There will be some games where our style causes the offense to bog down and teams like Kansas or Tech or Houston just eat us alive. I think KY will change his philosophy slightly as the season wears on. I'm REALLY curious how it unfolds.