Exhibition Notes and Quotes: Alaska Anchorage

Individual Notes

Junior guard Matt Carlino again led the Cougars with 17 points after doing so in their first exhibition game with 23. Freshman center Eric Mika joined him with 17 points. Both players had double-doubles with Mika grabbing 14 rebounds to Carlino's 11.
Kyle Collinsworth scored 14 and Tyler Haws scored 13 and were the other two Cougars in double figures. Haws added seven boards, while Collinsworth had six rebounds, three assists, three steals and a block.
Nate Austin (8), Frank Bartley IV (4), Skyler Halford 9), Collinsworth, Josh Sharp (5) and Mika each scored more points than they did against Colorado College a week ago.
Seven Cougars put up very consistent stat lines between the two exhibitions, while Mika improved over his outing from last week. Mika scored 11 more points, grabbed 10 more rebounds, had an extra assist and a steal and equalled his block total.

Team Notes

The Cougars pulled down 25 total offensive rebounds over 40 minutes against the Seawolves. They pulled down 44 defensive rebounds and outrebounded Alaska Anchorage by 40, 69 to 29.
Mika had more offensive rebounds than all of the Seawolves with eight. Haws and Sharp each had five, which were more offensive boards than they had defensive rebounds. Bartley had the same number of offensive to defensive with three each.
BYU had three different runs of 10 points or more. A 12-2 run over three minutes in the first half gave the Cougars a four-point lead. An 11-0 run over four minutes later in the first half gave them a 16-point lead. In the early part of the second half, a three minute 13-0 run gave the Cougars a 26-point lead.
BYU held the Seawolves to 32.9 percent from the field and 23.5 percent from the 3-point line. Both around 20 points off their season averages from last year.

Trends

The Cougars took 37 shots before seven seconds had elapsed on the shot clock. In those possessions, BYU was 16 of 37 on the shots they took. The Cougars earned second chance points on 10 more of those possessions, so shooting with less than seven seconds gone meant points on 67 percent of those possessions. These possessions accounted for 49 of BYU's 99 total points.
Winder scored seven of his nine points shooting early in the shot clock. Carlino scored 11 of his 17 early, while eight different Cougars scored from taking shots within seven seconds.

BYU Quotes

Coach Dave Rose

"The most important thing tonight is we got a lot of guys some good court time and our focus was to challenge and contest their 3-point shots. They are a really good 3-point shooting team and they run really good action to get to that 3-point shot. Except for a couple real obvious mistakes, I thought most of the threes were pretty contested which obviously worked to our advantage."

"We got a lot of guys playing a lot of minutes. You can take these two exhibition games and they were good for us in being able to play a lot of these new players. Now we will get back to practice on Monday and start playing Friday for real."

"I believe with this group that all these players can help us win. We still need to figure out their roles and our starting lineup and late game lineups, but being able to get a lot of young guys experience and time on the floor in a game setting is really good."

"Matt was really aggressive in that first half is that what you want to see out of him."

Nate Austin

"This week in practice a big emphasis for us was make sure we were crashing the boards. I think a lot of guys were getting good rebounds. We have a lot of guys who can get rebounds and that was a big key for us tonight."

"As long as we win, that’s all that really matters. If I come off the bench great or if I start, great. I trust Coach Rose and I think Coach Rose will do what’s best for our team."

"I think our coaches have a good game plan for us and we followed the game plan pretty well tonight. We will follow the game plan for Weber State. We will focus on having a good practice each day and then be ready for the game on Friday."

Kyle Collinsworth

"There are just a lot of new guys. We haven’t played with each other, but we are doing a lot better in practice. It’s a big focus of ours, communicating on the defensive end and talking to each other. It’s a habit we need to get into."

"Every practice, every game feels a little bit better. I got in some foul trouble in the first half so it was tough but the second half felt good again."

Alaska Anchorage Quotes

Coach Rusty Osborne

"I like the two kids who sat out last year, our point guard [Brian] McGill and [Travis] Thompson. They got in and got to play against high-level competition and get used to playing basketball again. They’re both very talented and they’ve got to shake that rust off, kind of like the Collinsworth kid for BYU. We’ve got to cure some rebounding problems, and we’ve just got to get deeper into our systems as we go along."

"We didn’t say anything before the game, because we didn’t want to make excuses, but Brad [Mears] was playing with a dislocated finger on his shooting hand. He dislocated it on Wednesday. It was just one of those things. He was catching a ball and it dislocated, so he sat out Thursday’s practice, and then we came down here yesterday. He missed some shots that I think he’ll make when he’s healthy. He’s going to be good for us. Jacob (Craft) is just young as far as basketball. He hasn’t played in a long time, so he’s just got to be patient. We’re excited about his future."

"[BYU] is one of the best teams we’re going to play all year, so we can go back and look at the film, see what we need to do better to compete against those guys. One is rebounding. It just gets us ready as we go along, just like even though the score was bad, it wasn’t for a long time [in the first half], so I think we gave them some good work. They had to do some things, and they had to work, especially defensively."