Xs and Oats: Prepare for a shootout, because 2025 BYU looks a whole lot like 2022 Alabama

Let’s begin with a pop quiz…

Without peeking, which of these teams is the 2021-2022 Alabama Crimson Tide and which is the 2024-2025 BYU Cougars?

• Team A: 24th overall with the 9th ranked offense and the 71st ranked defense. 81.2 PPG scored (24th), 71.4 PPG allowed (140th). Win over a tournament team by 26 points, loss to a tournament team by 21.
• Team B: 28th overall with the 7th ranked offense and the 92nd ranked defense. 81.8 PPG (4th) scored; 71.0 PPG allowed (110th). Win over a tournament team by 19 points, loss to a tournament team by 28.

If you guessed that Alabama was Team B, congratulations.

You surely see the point of this exercise. The Tide’s opponent in the Sweet 16 is one that it is intimately familiar with, if not on the floor, at least in trajectory. That is because the road the Cougars walk upon is a well-worn path down which Alabama has already traveled. The Cougars are a high-octane squad with a lot of firepower, but with a defense that has veered from the merely passable all the way to the downright rotten.

In the point spread preview, I said that BYU is Great Value Kentucky. The more apt comparison is probably to a slightly better version of Alabama team three years ago.

So, let’s talk about the Mormons (and not just the hot ones, like Eliza Dushku).

Tale of the Tape:
East No. 2 Alabama (27-8, SEC 3rd) v East No. 6 BYU (26-9, Big 12 3rd)

Spread: Alabama -5

Opponent KenPom: 24 (9 offense, 71 defense, 178 tempo)
Opponent Evan Miya: 17 (7 offense, 54 defense, 168 tempo)
Opponent Bart Torvik: 12 (5 offense, 57 defense, 181 tempo)
Opponent NET: (9-7 Q1, 13-9 Q1/Q2); Q1 opponent for the Tide
Opponent RPI: 30
Opponent Best Win: vs 11 TTU (13)
Opponent Worst Loss: @ Providence (95)

UA Ken Pom: 6th (4 Off, 29 Defense, 1 Tempo)
UA Evan Miya: 5th (3 Off, 21 Defense, 1 Tempo)
UA Bart Torvik: 5th (4 Off, 27 Defense, 1 Tempo)
UA NET Ranking: 6 (13-8 Q1, 21-8 Q1/2)
UA RPI: 2
UA Best Win: No. 2 @ Auburn
UA Worst Loss: No. 28 (N) Oregon

Cliff Notes on BYU: Team that has played fairly poorly away from home and rang up most of its best wins at home, but came on late and were much-improved in the second-half of league play. Very good offense that leans into a mid-paced perimeter-and-rim game, with a lot of size as a whole, but no dominant interior length. Its veteran backcourt has two of the country’s best three-point shooters, and that’s only made more dangerous by star Freshman PG Egor Demin, among the best in the country at distributing the ball. Veteran team as a whole, with four upperclassmen starters and only two underclassmen (both freshmen) seeing any real playing time of note. Uses their across-the-roster height to attack the basket and get after rebounds. Consequently, it’s a tough team to guard for opposing backcourts.

Yesterday, we alluded to new BYU head man, Kevin Young, implementing an NBA offense upon his arrival. Seemingly forever, the Cougars had been a team that feasted on middies and post play (even Mark Pope’s bunch leaned more into floor shooting than his Wildcats do). And the transformation has been fairly stark in Provo with the adoption of NBA-style rim-and-three.

Here are the shooting tendencies for all the Eastern teams:

Notice a trend there? All-but one team that relies on mid-range shots has been eliminated. The analytically-favored teams are still playing ball. People can whine about the death of basketball, but more and more teams are adopting this approach because it wins games.

That is what Kevin Young brought to an already-good shooting group: he is letting them rip more this year. 3PA are up almost 4 per game from last year, to 28.5. Because of the Cougars frenzied ball movement, BYU is shooting better too, up almost 4% to an electric 37.8% from deep (28th). They’re shooting more, they’re making more, and they’re playing very unselfish with a PG who has a knack for finding an open shooter.

That is in part to the “.5” system that Young brought in from his mentor at the Phoenix Suns, Montie Williams. The Point-Four is a hybrid 4-out/5-out scheme that is almost positionless basketball. The driving philosophy of the .5 is not merely shot selection; it’s to scheme “wide open” shots (defender 6+ feet away). The result is an offense that takes a lot more time to unfold than the trigger-happy approach ‘Bama has adopted. It’s similar to Brad Underwood’s Illinois in that respect: wide-open shooting, but not at a wide-open pace.

Though there are the basketball staples in the playbook, it’s not wedded to a rigid scheme of screens and sets though, emphasizing instead player agency, motion, and quick passing to find those “wide open” looks. And it has to happen in .5 seconds: Shoot, pass, drive — just make a quick decision.

You have to admit, as a player this actually sounds fun as hell to play in, right?

The downsides should be obvious in such a free wheeling offense though: Because players don’t always know what everyone’s assignment is, or they are playing off-schedule themselves, it’s very susceptible to the run-out after a rebound, or breakouts on turnovers. That leads us to the second problem: Turnovers. We all love Egor’s 35% assist rate, 34th in the country; absolutely no one loves his 25% turnover rate. The 6’9” CG from Russia turns heads and stomachs in equal measure. It requires a preternatural basketball IQ to run this offense for 40 minutes, making split-second decisions, and then demanding the same of everyone else when they touch the rock and not turn the ball over.

Sure enough, those turnovers show up everywhere too in their unreal 17.5% turnover rate, which is even higher than ‘Bama. However, it’s far worse when BYU turns the ball over. Alabama leads the country in possessions; they always have another crack at the ball. BYU has no such luxury — they have about 7 fewer possession than does the Tide, so each turnover hurts more. Just as St. Mary’s is a great offensive rebounding team because they have to be, BYU almost has to be great-shooting perimeter team out of self-defense.

Another thing is a certainty here, as well. Alabama cannot simply play drop defense against this bunch; the Tide will have to contest perimeter shots. They have one of the nation’s best three-point shooting defenses, often sacrificing their interior defense, and they’ll need that. So too will ‘Bama need to be disciplined and not leave their feet. The backcourt is as likely to dash towards the rim as they are to shoot. We’ve seen Tide guards get cooked off dribble penetration before (I’m still having PTSD from UNC, second-half Arkansas, and Rutgers). Let’s hope it’s been cleaned up somewhat since then. This will be a game where Labaron can pick pockets and Youngblood’s big body can help negate Egor’s mammoth size, but Alabama is absolutely going to need a solid defensive effort from Holloway and Mark. No one is asking them to be Gary Payton overnight, but they cannot be ongoing liabilities either.

Defensively, the Cougars are pretty rotten. It’s bog-standard man-up defense, that doesn’t pressure the ball, leaning more the lag towards the post a la Alabama. That makes them a highly efficient defensive rebounding team. BYU lacks a true rim defender on the inside though. The tallest the starting roster goes is 6’9”. Alabama’s frontcourt should have a field day. And, somehow, the Cougars are even worse in the backcourt, where they are surrendering 35% from beyond the arc. If Alabama’s guards ever wanted to find open looks, if Mark ever needed to regain his mojo, those opportunities will be abundant here.

Is it fair to call the Point-Five glorified street ball? Maybe. But it is a lot of fun to watch, and because it puts so much pressure on backcourts unaccustomed to volume shooting, it has caught a lot of teams off guard. Suffice it to say. Alabama will not be one of them.

Point Spread and Prediction

I want to draw your attention to the RPI stat above.

See how the Cougars RPI is so much lower than their efficiency numbers? That’s because the RPI is iterative: Who you played, and who those teams played. Sure, all of the major analytics guys have a quality of schedule, SOS or other metric in there, but it’s instructive here. BYU has played a far weaker schedule than Alabama. It was among the worst non-conference schedules in the country (345). Once conference play began, BYU improved somewhat, but it was still a very week schedule against other NET teams — only Duke (60th) was flat-out worse, with the two other B12 teams being about as soft.

And, importantly here, they’ve played worse against it. BYU had 8 opportunities against KenPom Top 25 teams, and went 3-5 against them (and even those were against other B12 squads.) The Cougars posted a 6-5 away record, and were just 2-4 in the Eastern time zone. Fabulous team at home, one of the best in the country, but nothing special outside of Provo. And they really did not handle cross-country travel well. BYU played against the 37th best offensive schedule and the 54th best defensive schedule, and somehow managed to lose nine games. Alabama played the 1st overall NET schedule, the 9th best OOC schedule, the 1st toughest offensive schedule, and the 3rd hardest defensive schedule. Alabama went 8-7 against its Top 25 opponents (and of those games, only three were at home).

We know what Alabama is made of at this point. BYU? Less so. Is it all sizzle and no steak, as some of their data points hint at? Is it a pretty good team that can’t get over the hump against other very good teams? Or, is it the squad that people have been fluffing this week — a rising power that is primed to spring the upset?

We think they fall more in the second camp, than the latter or former. For now. This is a favorable matchup overall for ‘Bama, a team with the bench and experience and firepower to prevail in just this type of game. BYU is, after all, a slightly better version of the Alabama we saw three years ago. Time will tell whether they can make the rest of the progression. But, it’s not probably enough for this game.

Per FanDuel, Alabama is a -5 favorite. Alabama was born to play this kind of contest, and all the data point in that direction: Crimson Tide by eight and some change, as ‘Bama finds some much-welcomed breathing space from the perimeter and the Tide dominate the paint.

Alabama 92
BYU 84

That could honestly be a very conservative estimate of the final score.

Again, our thanks to FanDuel for sponsoring this site. We’ll see you over there.

How To Watch
6:09 Central, Thursday 27 March 25 (CBS National)

Hope for the best,
Roll Tide

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