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Greetings from Las Vegas, everyone.
Monday is a huge day for both BYU basketball programs in the West Coast Conference tournament semifinals at Orleans Arena.
The fifth-seeded Cougar women take on top-seeded Gonzaga at 1 p.m. MDT, while the second-seeded BYU men take on sixth-seeded Portland at 9:30 p.m. MDT.
Both games are at Orleans Arena.
The BYU men got some good news Monday morning when Tyler Haws was named one of five finalists for the Jerry West Shooting Guard of the Year Award. Saturday night, Haws hit the game-winner against Santa Clara with 2.5 seconds remaining to lift BYU to a 78-76 victory in the WCC quarterfinals. He is currently third in the country in scoring with a 22.2 average.
Notre Dame's Jerian Grant, Ohio State's D'Angelo Russell, Oklahoma's Buddy Hield and Wichita State's Ron Baker are the other finalists.
Coincidentally, Gonzaga's Kyle Wiltjer is a finalist for the Karl Malone Power Forward of the Year Award.
Here's my advance of today's BYU-Portland game, which takes a look at the mounting pressure on the bubble-sitting Cougars. To me, BYU played cautiously on Saturday night, with the exception of Skyler Halford. The other Cougars played like they were trying to protect something. Halford's two driving layups late in the second half cannot be understated. They were huge.
Kyle Collinsworth said the Cougars have to be more aggressive on Monday night against Portland's towering front line.
"For the last 10 games or so, we have had an every game mindset to take in one game at a time, one practice at a time, and that's why we've been successful, is we are not skipping a game," Collinsworth said. "We are just focused on the game in front of us, and that's why we have been able to win a lot of games in a row."
Haws and Collinsworth said BYU cannot afford to fall behind by eight points in the first half, as they did a week ago Thursday at Portland.
"They are really big and they present a big challenge for us on rebounding," Haws said. "That's something that we have kinda gone up and down with throughout our season. We got to be locked in from the very tip and be ready to box out the right way and battle those big guys inside.
I remember just how well we played the second half of that game. I felt like we were kinda flat up there the first half, but the second half we fought, we had an edge to us. We rebounded the ball really well. Guys were playing together and sharing the ball. It was awesome, it was fun. I think that momentum that we found in that second half led to that win over Gonzaga and that win up there."
Rebounding is where Corbin Kaufusi comes into the equation. The freshman grabbed a career-high seven boards against Santa Clara, and will need to stay out of foul trouble tonight to be effective again.
"Corbin's improvement has been a huge part of the success of our team the last month," BYU coach Dave Rose said. "People all have their own opinion of maybe what we weren't doing at one time, and what we are doing now. But we found a pretty good rotation in our roster, and a lot of that is because of the steady play we are getting up front.
Josh [Sharp] is giving us really good minutes. Ryan Andrus is giving us good minutes. Corbin has been able to take his minutes from around 13-14 a game to 25, 28 minutes a game, and be really effective with those minutes. His rebounding tonight in certain spots, and his ability to protect the rim, was really good.
And then he is just a physical presence in there, I think, is really welcomed by our guys. Corbin continuing to improve will help our team, but we've got another handful of guys that we need to jump in that same area, and hopefully they can do that here in the next three or four weeks."
As for the BYU women today, the focus will be on junior guard Lexi Eaton, who hit a game-winner herself last week. Her baseline jumper lifted BYU over Saint Mary's. Saturday, Haws was asked if he took any advice from Eaton before hitting his own game-winner.
"First off, I was so happy when I heard that Lexi hit her shot to help them beat Saint Mary's. It is awesome," Haws said. "There is not a harder worker than her on the girls team. She is always in the gym, and so I am happy for her and the women's team.