Reasonable people can get all geeky and agree or disagree over whether BYU got the right seed (6) in the East Region of the NCAA Tournament, weighing wins, comparing records with other teams that received better or worse seeds. Have at it.
But there’s something the Cougars absolutely have to address and solve — or exorcise — before their tournament play commences on Thursday, when they face VCU (11 seed) in the opening round in Denver. (If the Cougars find a way to get by the Rams, and seeding holds, they would play Wisconsin (3 seed) in the next round.)
It’s a matter for them of great importance. They have to tackle the supernatural, the mystical, the metaphysical, the transcendent. Yeah, trippy, I know. We’ll get deeper into it in a minute.
First, the jock talk.
Normally, their bracket would seem a nice little setup for the Cougars, playing at altitude in a sister Rocky Mountain city against opponents that on paper will not overwhelm them. VCU — 28-6 and winners of the A-10 Conference tournament — is a scrappy, hardy bunch that plays decent defense. Among its many wins, it also lost to Seton Hall, Nevada, New Mexico, St. Bonaventure, Saint Louis and Dayton. The Rams have won three consecutive games, straight through their league tournament. They are coached by Ryan Odom, who was the boss at Utah State for two seasons in 2021 and 2022; he has been rumored as a candidate to take over at other schools on account of the fact that he has a stellar record as a program leader.
Guard Max Shulga, who played for Odom at USU, leads (tied) VCU in scoring, averaging 15 points and also leads the team in assists (four) and steals (1.8) per game.
As a team, the Rams average 77.4 points and hold their opponents to just 62.4. For the mathematically challenged, that’s a scoring differential of 15, an impressive number. They hit just under 45 percent of their field goal attempts and hold their opponents to just under 39 percent. They make 33 percent of their own 3-pointers, but limit the other guys to an awful 30 percent.
What does that mean for BYU? Well, the Cougars are recovering from their horrible showing against Houston in the semifinals of the Big 12 tournament, a game which saw them shoot the ball as though they were heaving tree stumps onto the bed of a Ford-350. Houston got up into BYU’s typically steady scorers, causing the Cougars to rush their attempts and, in general, look jangled and jittery.
The question then becomes: Can VCU do to BYU what Houston did? That would be surprising if if were to happen, given that 1) Houston is a far superior team to VCU, and 2) BYU’s offensive performance was more an abnormality than anything to be expected. The Cougars’ point total against Houston’s extraordinarily athletic team was their lowest output of the season (54). In the nine straight wins in front of that defeat, BYU scored 73, 80, 91, 96, 91, 77, 88, 85, and 96 points, all against Big 12 opponents, some of them strong defensive teams.
No doubt Odom will study the film of that Houston win and make the attempt to replicate its disruptive defensive attack put on the Cougars. If the Rams can achieve that, good on them. If they can’t, there’s only one reason to believe BYU won’t get a tournament win.
That reason? Because the Cougars are cursed. They don’t win NCAA Tournament games. It’s just a fact. Last year’s loss to 11-seed Duquesne was just the most recent example. Before that, they were dropped by 11-seed UCLA in 2021. In 2015, they got beat by Mississippi. In 2014, Oregon defeated them. In 2012, after surviving a First Four game against Iona, they got eliminated by Marquette.
It’s what the Cougars do. Or, at least, have done.
Other than Jimmer Fredette’s teams in 2010 and 2011, BYU’s history in previous years is pretty much defined in the Big Dance by opening-round losses. The Cougars’ overall record in the NCAA Tournament sits presently at a subterranean 15-34.
In those games after Jimmer was gone, in four of its five losses, BYU scored in the 60s.
It’s fairly clear, then, what the Cougars have to do to beat VCU and to have any shot in subsequent rounds. They have to call in a shaman or a voodooist or some kind of soothsayer, a healer, to take the curse off, and they have to score their points. Not just the obvious — score more points than the other dudes. No, they have to stir the kind of offensive firepower they conjured in those nine straight victories, most of them against quality foes, when they averaged 86 points.
Kevin Young has said in so many words that that’s this BYU iteration’s identity. They have to rediscover themselves. They must create their shots by moving the ball, driving and kicking, coming off screens, finding their spots around the arc and flushing those bombs. They have to believe. As Young said it after the Houston debacle, they must ramp up the focus and the fierceness.
That’s the easier part, the part they can rehearse.
The hard part is … losing. Losing the curse, the whammy, the malediction, not the games. How? Do a cleanse. Sing a requiem. Dig a hole, throw the negativity in, then cover it up. Burn a stack of incense. Get some rosewater and dowse the team in it. Do a team-wide body scrub with some righteous salt. Ring some bells. Put your right leg in, put your right leg out, put your right leg in and shake it all about. Do the hokey pokey, that’s what it’s all about.
Beats me.
Then, if or when the evil spirits are chased away, don’t make stupid passes. Don’t get all wigged out. Don’t turn the ball over. Get the rock where it’s supposed to go and drain the shots you’ve hit for the better part of a month now. And win a game or two in a tournament where you haven’t won since all that mania ended, when You-Know-Who left the building, all those years ago.
