Mark Pope is pliable to deploying hired hands. It is working.
The BYU basketball program struggles, at times, to sign high school players who take two years off for missionary service. The gap to fill is critical and the best answer has always been the quick fix of transfer talent.
The trouble is that such a solution is often short-term, requires the right person, burdens the team with chemistry challenges and sometimes flames out.
Pope has it working on all cylinders right now and he did so a year ago too when he brought Jake Toolson with him from Utah Valley University and Alex Barcello from the University of Arizona.
BYU stands 12-3 heading into Saturday’s home matchup with 6-6 Pepperdine. The three losses have come to teams with combined records of 37-4, one of them No. 1 Gonzaga.
Transfers.
BYU struggles without them.
Right now, they’re leading the parade. Nine of BYU’s 17 roster players are transfers.
Matt Haarms (Purdue) just had a perfect shooting night, making all nine of his attempts for a career-high 23 points.
Barcello is killing it, challenging Gonzaga’s busload of ballhandlers as the league’s best point guard. He’s shooting 50% from the 3-point line.
Brandon Averette (UVU) has shown to be a great accent guard, already making game-changing shots in crunch time. Gideon George (New Mexico JC), is an athletic answer off the bench, especially on the boards and defense.
Richard Harward (UVU) is an under-the-basket immovable monster and Spencer Johnson (Salt Lake Community College) is now starting while guard Brandon Warr (Westminster) was just cleared by the NCAA to play.
It’s tough to project how good this team is. It does have some warts with slow starts, inconsistent 3-point shooting. But for what it is built for, it is killing teams in the paint with a train of big bodies that have both height and girth. This, without Gavin Baxter, out for the season with an early injury.
BYU’s bench is outscoring opponents with relentless consistency.
Kolby Lee and freshman Caleb Lohner join Harward, gobbling up rebounds and leaning on opponents, and with Haarms, using his 7-foot-3 swat act inside, it’s getting to WCC opponents not named Gonzaga and coached by Mark Few.
The wear-down factor is apparent and a trend.
In the last three league games, two of them on the road, against Saint Mary’s, San Francisco and Portland, BYU’s bench has outscored opponents 119 to 48. Subsequently, in the paint the Cougars have outscored those teams 126 to 64.
In the last three games that is an average bench scoring advantage of 39.6 to 16.
To have a bench give that kind of punch while starters are resting? No wonder foes are wearing down at the end of games, struggling to score in the final 10 minutes like the Gaels and Dons.
And this gets back to transfers.
To keep transfers happy, you have to use them, create a role, make them feel the move was worth it.
Not an easy task.
Pope brags he’s got the best locker room in the country.
That’s hard to prove.
But statistically, it looks like he’s enjoying the fruits of just that kind of chemistry, and you have to credit him for that in both his years piloting the Cougars.
Coaches say the most important work you’ll do is actually off the court with recruiting, building roles, team chemistry and spirit.
If you don’t have that, you’ll be fighting more than the other coach and his roster.
Recruiting transfers has become a historic key to BYU basketball success during the last 25 years when Steve Cleveland was tasked with bringing the Cougars back from a one-win season in 1997.
Pick your impact player. Terrell Lyday, Ron Selleaze, Travis Hansen, Trent Whiting, Brian Dignan, Silester Rivers, Rafael Araujo, Mike Hall, Keena Young, et al.
Now it’s Averette, Harward, Barcello, George, Johnson and others filling in the recruiting gaps, providing continuity and lifting the Cougars to a No. 29 NET ranking with three losses to No. 2 NET Gonzaga, No. 13 Boise State and No. 26 USC.
And, it’s a rebuilding year.