Update: This was sent out on Tuesday morning because my newsletter sender was having issues on Monday. Some of these updates for upcoming games may be out of date like the WCC Tournament games.

St Mary’s has watched BYU play 2 games in this tournament, setting up this classic semifinal matchup. The title words were spoken by Darth Vader to Obi-Wan Kenobi in the classic movie Star Wars A New Hope. Darth Vader/St Mary’s are powerful and good. They were waiting for Obi-Wan/BYU and are ready. Hopefully, the results are different though, Obi-Wan ends up sacrificing himself so that Luke Skywalker and his friends are able to escape to the Millenium Falcon. Hopefully, BYU isn’t going to sacrifice themselves for anyone though, they need to go all out for a win.

BYU Weekly Sports Update

Women’s Sports:

• Golf: The women’s team finished 2nd at the lightning and rain-shortened Causeway Invitational last week. Allysha Mateo finished tied for 5th at E overall.
• Basketball: The ladies finished their conference season with a loss on last Monday to Portland. They headed to the WCC Tournament as the 5 seed. They won their first game against 9-seed Pepperdine 74-59. They then faced 4-seed San Francisco and pulled it out 66-56. They now face No 1 seed Gonzaga tonight.
• Gymnastics: The team scored 196.350 in their final home meet defeating Alaska. The team then traveled to Columbus to take on #16 Ohio State. The team just lost 195.575 – 196.575. The Cougars will travel to Arizona to take on the University of Arizona this weekend.
• Softball: The team dropped their first game of the tournament to Oregon St 4-7. The team came back the next day and beat UNLV 9-2, Portland St 8-3, and then on Saturday against Idaho St 4-3. They finish up the tournament next Wednesday against Utah.
• Tennis: The women’s team won their first WCC game against San Francisco 5-2. They then followed that up a few days later with another WCC win against Santa Clara 4-0. The team will come home this week and play Boise State and Utah at home.

Men’s Sports

• Baseball: The first game of the week against UVU was canceled due to the weather. The team then took on Omaha in Provo where they took the first two games of the series 12-11 and 8-4 but dropped the last game of the series 4-16, but still won the series. This week the team plays Utah Tech in St George and then starts a 3-game series against Creighton.
• Tennis: The men’s team lost their first game in Texas against Rio Grand Valley 3-4. They then played Texas A&M Corpus Christi and lost 0-4. The team goes to Salt Lake this weekend to take on Utah.
• Basketball: BYU went to the WCC Tournament as a 5-seed and took on the 8-seed Portland winning 82-71. They then took on the 4-seed LMU and won 73-63. They will have a huge test tonight against the 1 seed St Mary’s in the semifinals.
• Volleyball: The Cougars went up against #5 Grand Canyon losing their first match in three sets. BYU then took them on the next day and made it a tighter game but ultimately fell in 5 sets. The team comes back home to the Smith Fieldhouse this weekend against #15 Ohio St. All 6 of the team’s losses have come on the road.

BYU Basketball Heading in the Right Direction

First things first, BYU basketball has looked GOOD in their first two games in the WCC Tournament. Of course, they weren’t against very great teams in Portland and LMU, but nonetheless, a win is a win. BYU takes on St Mary’s tonight looking to go to the tournament championship to play the winner of San Francisco and Gonzaga. Mark Pope has BYU rolling. They have played great defense with high intensity. In both games against Portland and LMU, the Cougars allowed a 42% and 40% field goal percentage and a 27% and 26% 3-point percentage. They have been great defensively.

Now comes the real test though, St Mary’s is a different animal. They are well-rounded and coached very well. They know how to exploit your weakness and they know how to rebound the ball. It’s going to be a fight! One last one in the WCC and WCC Tournament! BYU apparently doesn’t have a great shot at winning the game according to ESPN’s FPI but I guess we will see!

BYU has also, in my opinion, put itself back onto the bubble of the NIT. They are close. A win against St Mary’s would probably put them in, but without it, they might be on the outside looking in. I guess we will see this Sunday when the NIT tournament is announced, but they are right there on the bubble of the NIT.

College Basketball News

We are now 6 days away from the March Madness bracket being revealed. That is crazy! We are so close. By the time I write my next blog, we will have a bracket!

Last Saturday was the last regular season conference games and there were some good upsets! 6 teams in the top 25 lost. 5 of them were to unranked teams! If this isn’t your warning that March Madness is here, well it’s here and this last week, champ week, before the bracket comes out is the beginning of the craziness. Heading into champ week, your top 5 ranked teams are 1. Houston, 2. UCLA, 3. Kansas, 4. Alabama, and 5. Purdue.

Big 12 Expansion Notes

The last bit of news that broke this week was about the Big 12 expanding and maybe the demise of the Pac-12. CBS and the Athletic are reporting that the Big 12 and Arizona St, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah are talking with the Big 12 AGAIN since the Pac-12 can’t get a very good media deal to the table. Apparently, the Pac 12’s deal with ESPN is on the low end so they have been talking with Amazon and AppleTV about getting a deal there but the money doesn’t seem to be there like the Big 12’s deal that just happened with ESPN and FOX which gives each team around $31 million. You can read the story from CBS here.

As a BYU fan, can you imagine BYU and Utah in the same conference again? I think it would be good and bad. I want BYU to own the Utah recruiting pool and jumping into the Big 12 can definitely help with that with Utah still in the Pac-12. It levels the playing field and gives BYU a chance to get some great recruits in Big 12 country. If Utah joins the Big 12, it will be another dogfight for recruits that I am not sure BYU will be able to win all the time. Utah will have more immediate success in the same conference as BYU, who wouldn’t want to join a team with better success in the same conference? But, it would make the BYU vs Utah games THAT much better.

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