What do QBs, the Big 12, and St Mary’s all have in common? A lot of excitement and hype, and sometimes, a lot of heartbreak. We have seen heartbreak from the QB position and could see some heartbreak from the Big 12 conference as we don’t win a lot of games, but for now, it’s a lot of excitement and hype with new QB transfers and finally being in a conference. For St Mary’s, it was an exciting and hyped game with a top-25 team coming to the Marriott Center, but it turned into pure heartbreak. St Marys gave BYU fans a glimmer of hope and then sucked it right away. Before we dive into these topics a little more, here is a quick update on this past week for BYU Sports.
Weekly BYU Sports Update
- Men’s Basketball: L vs St Marys 57-56. Currently 14-10 and 4-5 in conference play.
- Women’s Basketball: W @ St Marys 74-59, L @ Pacific 66-79. Currently 12-10 and 7-4 in conference play. BYU’s Lauren Gustin is unreal. She was named to the Defensive Player of the Year watchlist last week and is currently averaging 15.6 PPG and 16.5 RPG. Go check her out!
- Men’s Volleyball: The #12 men’s volleyball team had their first loss of the season @ #6 UC Irvine 0-3 but came back two days later and had an upset W @ #6 UC Irvine 3-2. Currently, 5-1.
- Men’s Track and Field: The #7 men’s track team claimed 7 new program top 10 marks and 10 personal records this last Friday and Saturday. Casey Clinger clocked the fastest 3000-meter time in school history.
- Women’s Track and Field: The #20 women’s track team had 8 personal bests, 4 program top 10 marks, and a new school record in the 4×400 meter squad race.
- Women’s Tennis: Opened the season against Weber St and won 7-0, quickly winning the doubles point between 3 games, and then sweeping all of their singles matches.
- Mens Swimming and Diving: The men’s team lost for the first time in their dual matchup with Utah, losing 163-137.
- Women’s Swimming and Diving: The women’s team lost as well 74-226, moving to 2-3 in dual matchups with Utah this year.
- Women’s Gymnastics: The women’s team notched their highest score of the season beating Utah State this weekend. So far this year in 4 meets, they have placed 4th, 4th, 1st, and 1st.
BYU Heartbreak
So first let’s talk about the heartbreak of the week in St Marys and BYU basketball. For a quick summary, BYU took the lead by 2 on a Spencer Johnson 3 with about 2 minutes left. St Marys scored on their next possession and we were tied for the last 1:52. St Marys had a chance to take the lead with 40 seconds left but missed. BYU had a chance to win the game with a last-second shot and took a timeout to set this up. In the end, Dallin Hall got fouled with 10 seconds left. But he is an awful free-throw shooter! (Shooting 59% on the season). He misses the first but makes the second. BYU is up 1 with 10 seconds left. St Mary’s went to their stud freshman and he hit a step-back jumper over Fouss and St Mary’s won. Another heartbreak.
The other hard part about this game was that BYU had 2 role players and 1 starter who were suspended for 1 game because of team rules. They will be back this week, but we definitely could have used their production to help us win the game. On the bright side, freshman Dallin Hall had a career-high 23 points and has emerged as a leader and a star lately for Mark Pope’s team after being put into the starting lineup. He could be a star in the making and is only a freshman! Here is a video of the last couple of minutes of this heartbreaking game.
BYU/Big 12
In case you didn’t know, BYU is going to the Big 12. We are officially in on July 1st. With this fall being BYU’s first football season in the Big 12, there is a lot of excitement and hype regarding BYU and how they are going to fare in the gauntlet of the Big 12, it is going to be scary and fun. Jaren Hall has declared for the draft leaving BYU with a hole at possibly the biggest position in football. Luckily, coaches have been hard at work and have had 2 recent QB transfers that I want to talk about. The first is Kedon Slovis. See his stats below. He’s been to USC, Pittsburgh, and now BYU. He has Power 5 conference experience and has a great overall RTG for a QB.
Just for reference, I have also attached Jaren Halls throwing stats from his career. Slovis was on track and better than Hall his freshman year but has since regressed. He will only be with BYU for one year and the last couple of years have not been good for Slovis, but here’s to hoping he can regain his freshman form with better receivers, a better offensive line, and a better offensive coordinator.
The other QB transfer that I want to talk about is the #1 QB JUCO transfer in the NATION, Jake Retzlaff, who committed to BYU. He is coming from Riverside City College. He will be a Junior this year, so he is presumed to be the backup this season to Slovis. But check out these stats! He threw for 4,596 yards, 44 TDs, rushed for 515 yards and 6 TDs, and completed 63% of his passes. He had nine games with 300+ yards passing and six games with over 400 yards. This was followed up by a 2021 season where he threw for over 3,300 yards and 23 TDs.
In my opinion, I think he could push for the starting job depending on how well Slovis plays this year! Here’s to hoping that we have good QB play in our first year in the Big 12.
On another slightly related Big 12 note, the Big 12 is planning to release the football schedule by February 1st, as in the next two days. I am seriously so excited about this and can’t wait to see who BYU plays in their first year in the Big 12! Here is a tweet from a college football writer for CBS Sports who does a great job at covering the Big 12 confirming a couple of weeks ago that the schedule will be released by the end of the month.
Some College Basketball News
Last Saturday a highly anticipated Big 12/SEC challenge in basketball happened. Teams played other teams in each conference. The SEC has some legit teams and so does the Big 12 so it was a huge showdown. The Big 12 won the challenge 7-3. Some of the biggest games were #9 Kansas vs Kentucky where Kansas pulled out the win, #4 Tennessee vs #10 Texas where Tennessee pulled out the win and Oklahoma vs #2 Alabama where Oklahoma upset the #2 team in the nation!
On a slightly related note to the Big 12, a new AP poll came out today and the Big 12 has 60%(!!!) of their conference in the top 15! (!!!) WHAT! That is insane. Those members are Kansas St at #7, Kansas at #8, Texas at #10, Baylor at #11, Iowa St at #13, and TCU at #15. Super excited for BYU to get into this conference and play these teams in a sold-out Marriott Center! That’s a heck of a conference and schedule right there.
If you want to learn more about BYU basketball’s Jaxson Robinson, check out this Deep Blue video here that dives into who Jaxson is as a person, why he chose BYU, and how he landed at BYU. He is only a Sophomore and could be a great player for BYU moving forward. Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter and get all the BYU sports news you need!
