With the first mini break in the basketball season, I wanted to get my thoughts down about where things are going with basketball.

Positives:
1) Egor's Shooting.
Egor is at 55% from the 3 on 5 attempts per game. And its not like he had 1 good game to inflate his stats. It's been incredibly consistent. To go along with that, he's shooting 71% from the 2. Catch and shoot, off the dribble, it all looks good. With this shooting, it cause defenses to key in on him more, opening more passing lanes.

2) Turnovers
With all the new players and new system, BYU is averaging under 10 turnovers a game (9.8). We'll see if that changes when BYU plays more difficult teams, but it's still good to see the team take care of the ball with how new everything is.

3) Richie Saunders
I didn't want to highlight any one thing as it's all been good. He's shooting 45% from the 3, averaging 1.5 steals and 1.3 blocks, and seems to be everywhere. He's taken a big step this off-season and is currently our 2nd leading scorer.

Negatives:
1) Free throw shooting. It's bad. Needs to be better to win important games.

Things to monitor:
1) Fouss vs Keita.
Evan Miya has a "top lineups" section on his website. It lists the best 2 man, 3 man, 4 man, and 5 man lineups according to his statistics. Every single lineup includes Fouss. I think KY came into this job saying he wants a rim rolling big and underestimated the impact that Fouss can have on a game. I'm not saying Fouss should start over Keita, but we should monitor if KY starts drawing up more plays for Fouss.

2) Kanon Catching's Defense
To go back into the "top lineups" section of Miya, Kannon is listed in all of the lineups but the 3 man. Why is that if he's only shooting 24% from the 3? Because of his rim protection. Kanon is averaging 1.5 blocks per game, which leads the team. He's so long and athletic, it makes you wonder if he could be BYU's lock down defender. I'm not sold yet, because he so young and I'm not sold on his foot speed, but Kanon's length and athleticism can make up for a lot of his mistakes.

3) The defense.
This defense has been super polarizing. One game, we're holding a bad team to 2 points in 10 minutes, the next game we're letting a bad team shoot a season high 3pt%. When the scheme works, it works well. BYU is averaging 10.8 steals and 7 blocks per game. When it doesn't work, there are a lot of open threes. I'm hoping this will figure itself out with more playing time, but it is something to monitor.