‘Intensity and urgency’: BYU focusing on what got it here in Thursday’s matchup with Alabama
Can ‘Cinderella’ Cougars keep up with the Crimson Tide’s elite offense in a high-scoring affair?
NEWARK, New Jersey — When it comes to this juncture of the Big Dance, there are no secrets left to discover, no hidden tendencies remaining to unveil, and no game plans to catch teams by surprise.
“It is about doing everything with intensity and urgency, because you never know if you will get this opportunity ever again.”
— BYU guard Dallin Hall
“It’s about doing what got you here as well as you possibly can,” BYU guard Dallin Hall said Wednesday after the Cougars practiced at the Prudential Center in downtown Newark and continued preparations to face a favored team that plays a lot like them, second-seeded Alabama, in an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 game. “It is about doing everything with intensity and urgency, because you never know if you will get this opportunity ever again.”
Tipoff in sixth-seeded BYU’s first Sweet 16 game since it lost in overtime to Florida in New Orleans in 2011 is at 5:05 p.m. MDT, and the game will be televised by CBS. It is obviously 26-9 BYU’s most important game since that one, and to a man Wednesday the Cougars said they feel ready, fortunate and up to the task.
“We know what is at hand and we know the focus that it takes to advance,” said leading scorer Richie Saunders. “We are super excited, and we feel ready.”
Borrowing from that old Shania Twain song, BYU plans to “Dance With the One That Brought You,” according to Hall — which in this case means the Cougars are going to play to their strengths such as depth, shotmaking and switching defenses, and let the chips fall where they may.
Or maybe an old football coach, Darrell K. Royal of Texas, said it better: “Dance with the one who brung ya.”
Facing an Alabama team that is a 4.5-point favorite and has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the nation, and with college basketball blue bloods Arizona and Duke also in the East Region semifinals, BYU has been hit with the Cinderella tag for this particular coronation ball. They have the underdog label, and there were some suggestions Wednesday from assorted national media that they are sort of the squad that doesn’t seem to belong with the others.
The Cougars don’t seem to mind.
“I mean, it has always been like that. We were 1-3 in conference. What do you gotta do? You gotta get rid of all the outside distractions, all the outside noise. You gotta focus on your group. That’s what we did,” Saunders said. “We had a little players meeting right then. … We wrote on the board, ‘We are going to play for each other, and we are going to play harder than the guy across from us on the other team.’ From that, there is so much outside noise, but we don’t listen to it. We just do our thing.”
Most of the questions for coach Kevin Young when he was on the dais Wednesday centered around his time in the NBA, and how he has patterned his program in an NBA style. To BYU fans, that’s old news.
When he did get a chance to talk about the actual game Thursday, Young, 43, brought up the fact that BYU was picked to finish ninth in the Big 12 and is playing in the Sweet 16, which nobody saw coming when the Cougars were 6-6 more than halfway through conference play.
“In a lot of ways you could say we’re a Cinderella,” Young said.
Inside the program, however, the Cougars have believed for months now that they are one of the best teams in the country, and now is the time to prove it.
That message remains consistent, Young said.
“I mean, you are one of 16 teams left. So whether they believed me or not (weeks ago), I think they believe it now, because they are here,” Young said. “That part for me has been rewarding, just in terms of getting the group to buy into what I am preaching to them every day, and then seeing the belief in each other and themselves. That has been super rewarding.”
Another theme that emerged from a half-dozen interviews with players is that Young has hammered the idea of not letting this opportunity pass without giving it everything they’ve got.
“Two words I used with our guys when we came into this tournament was focus and urgency. Our guys are focused. They do have the urgency to not wait, and to learn it from (players who returned after last year’s opening-round loss to Duquesne),” Young said. “They felt like last year in their first-round game they were kinda waiting around. So we used that a lot going into the VCU game, stuck with it for the Wisconsin game, and then clearly are bringing it here as well.”
In many ways, Thursday’s combatants are a lot alike. Alabama has made 357 3-pointers and averages around 91 points per game; BYU has made 373 3-pointers and averages around 81 points per game.
The Cougars have won 11 of their last 12 games and scored 80 or more points in nine of their last 11 games, and 90 or more points in five of their last 10.
Alabama has gone over the 90-point plateau in seven of its last 10 games.
“They get out in transition and run. They try to play like us that way. They also try to get to the paint a lot,” said BYU’s Hall. “They got some guards that are really quick. So we are working and focusing on those things.”
The straw that stirs the drink for the Tide is guard Mark Sears, who averages 18.6 points and 5.0 assists per game. Of course, BYU just gave up 37 points to another similar guard, Wisconsin’s John Tonje.
Defense will be “super important. I think it will give one team the edge,” Hall said. “That’s where our focus has been in practice, figuring out ways to slow them down and execute against some of their actions. We feel like we are in a really good spot, and yeah, we are ready to go out there and play.”
Said Sears: “They play a lot like us, very fast-paced. It should be a very fun game, but it is going to come down to getting stops. … We’ve got to do a great job of transition defense because I’ve seen they’re very, very elite in transition, and we’ve just got to do a great job of slowing that down.”
