Hawaii-BYU 2010 Hoops Preview

Scouting Hawaii
They are a fairly young team with little depth, which is not a good combination playing in Salt Lake City, in altitude, against a ranked opponent who advanced to the Round of 32 in last season's NCAA tournament.  Hawaii's leading scorer and rebounder will also not play due to an injury.  With him missing the last two games, they started one senior, one junior, two sophomores, and a freshman.  The lone senior is Hiram Thompson, who dons the no. 2.  He has only scored 10 or more points in 5 road games in his career: the Warriors are 0-5 in those games.  As much as Hawaii would like to lean on their senior in what figures to be a hostile environment, that may not be the best idea (though he did drop 15 points on BYU last season, in an 18-point loss).  This season, Hawaii is 5-0 at home, and 0-1 on the road.  Only 7 players played in that lone loss on the road earlier this week.
4 players average double-digit points.  Only 3 players have more assists than turnovers, and two players average over 3 turnovers a game.  The true freshman from Scottsdale, AZ, no. 24 Bo Barnes is the only true outside threat for the Warriors.  JC transfer and sophomore Joston Thomas is their biggest inside threat, no. 5, but BYU can counter him with a steady diet of Hartsock, Davies, or even James Anderson.  If they can shut him down in single coverage, the Warriors may not have anywhere else to go for points.

BYU's Strategy
Run, run, and run some more.  BYU should utilize their much deeper bench and throw 10-11 guys at Hawaii.  They should push the ball and get the game in the open court as much as possible.  They should look to exploit Hawaii's youth and lack of depth in the open court.  Defensively, they do not need to do anything different than play solid man-to-man defense.  BYU averages 10 steals and 4 blocks per game.  Hawaii turned the ball over 25 times in their road loss at Cal Poly on Wednesday night, while only managing to get 35 shots in 40 minutes.

Prediction
Well, on paper this game is a blowout.  Hawaii may be 5-0, but they played bad teams, and they played them all at home.  Hawaii, with a more experienced team last season, lost at home by 18 to BYU.  It is tough to envision a way for them to contain BYU's high-octane offense.  BYU 88, Hawaii 59.  Remember, you can view this game at 4pm Mountain on BYU-TV or byutv.org on your internet browser, if the Auburn-South Carolina SEC Championship game on CBS, starting at 2pm Mountain, gets out of hand by 4pm...