BYU vs. Coppin State Postgame Notes

PLAYER NOTES

Eric Mika finished with 18 points and five rebounds. He is averaging 22.0 points and 11.5 rebounds in his first two games this season. Mika added three blocks – tying a career high – and one assist.

Yoeli Childs reached double-digit rebounds for the first time in his career with 15. It was tied for the fifth-most rebounds by a BYU freshman in a game. He also just missed a double-double with eight points and added three assists, one block and one steal.

Nick Emery extended his double-figure scoring streak to 15 games with 13 points tonight. He added three assists and two rebounds in 22 minutes of action.

TJ Haws scored 11 to follow up a 20-point performance on Monday, giving him double figures in his first two games as a Cougar. He added five rebounds, one steal and one assist. Haws also hit 3 3-pointers for the second-straight game.

Colby Leifson and Payton Dastrup both scored their first career points. Dastrup finished with nine and Leifson with three. Both hit their first career threes in the game.

TEAM NOTES

Dave Rose started the lineup of L.J. Rose, TJ Haws, Nick Emery, Kyle Davis and Eric Mika for the second consecutive game.

BYU opened the game on a 14-2 run and led for the entire contest.

The Cougars had four players in double figures with Eric Mika (18), Nick Emery (13), TJ Haws (11) and Elijah Bryant (11).

BYU had 14 different players see time on the court with 12 of them getting on the scoreboard. All 14 played seven minutes or more.

Quotes

BYU Coach Dave Rose
“I think the biggest takeaway from this game is that it was good to get a lot of players out there—get them their first real minutes of the season. I think that there is obviously a couple of things that really concern us from this game. We turned the ball over way too many times and they had quite a few offensive rebounds. I think defensively you’re trying to defend 50-60 misses and they did a better job at tracking those balls down, especially in second half. But, it’s a good win for us. We have a challenge for us on Saturday and we look forward to that. We’ll move on, watch some film tomorrow and get ready for a good game Saturday night.”

“I think they do a lot of things defensively, they jump in and out of things and I think tonight most of the turnovers tonight were from when we tried to share the ball. We had a could aggressive drives that they did a good job at taking from us, but I really think a lot of it was just their aggressiveness. I think they play defense to steal, that’s what it looks like when you watch the film. They like to get their hand in there and take the ball from you and we were soft with the ball. The thing is I thought we would clean it up after halftime. We had 13 in the first half and 10 in the second half. Our big guys would put the ball on the floor and they did a good job at covering down and taking it from us. There’s a lot of things we can show and a lot of things we can work on.”

On Elijah Bryant
“I think every time you see him he is getting a little more aggressive and playing more on attack. What I really like about this team is how these guards we have, obviously they are all really talented offensive players, but they all play a little bit different. They’re not the same guy and that’s the real strength of their game. I think that can help us be a little more diverse.”

Yoeli Childs

“I like playing in any game. It’s an awesome environment here at the Marriott. We have the greatest fans and its just fun coming out and playing with these guys every night.”

“Everybody just boxed out. Most of the time the ball kind of just fell my way. Everybody just boxed out and it just happens.”

“They were playing hard the whole time. I think they got 19 offensive rebounds so that’s something we have to look at on the drawing board, but they played very hard.”

“I can’t wait (to play on Saturday). That’s the thing that’s really great about this team. We get a win and its just onto the next one. Focus immediately shifts to the next game on the schedule and we’re just ready to go. I wish we were playing right now.”

Elijah Bryant

“Yeah I’m starting to feel more comfortable after my surgery. Just taking it one day at ta time and not rushing anything.”

On turnovers
“I think we were just trying to over share the ball when we were out there. Not necessarily bad passes, we were jus trying to overshare the ball.”

“I think right now I’m just focusing on the present and focusing on right now. The next step is right now and practice tomorrow. I’m not really looking into the future I’m just focused on everything I can do right in the moment.”

Head Coach Michael Grant
"It was a tough situation going from one side of the country to the other but that's all a part of basketball and being able to raise the money we need for our program. We have to play those games to try and get ourselves ready for conference play."

"It was important for us to play small at times and force the big guys away from the basket and speed them up. Whenever you can speed big guys up and force them to make plays it's good because they aren't guards and will turn the ball over because they feel uncomfortable. I think BYU did a great job in the second half because they came out and were focused on pounding us around the basket. Every time we went small it was layup or dunk, layup or dunk, so they really took advantage of that. We just didn't have any answer for them in the post.

On playing in Provo

"It does a lot for our team. But over the last two years this has been our non-conference schedule. In our non-conference our guys expect to play in these types of games and have this experience and it really prepares us to play in our conference because we know we're not going to see teams like this."

"They didn't really slow us down tonight, we took 81 shots, we just weren't hitting our shots. Tonight we were 21 of 81 and missed 60 shots. They didn't slow our offense down, we just couldn't make our shots, we just couldn't score. I really thought we had a lot of open looks but the ball just isn't going in for us right now and hopefully the drought stops soon."

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