How will the BYU basketball team fare away from Provo this week? – Deseret News

A mariachi band greeted BYU’s basketball contingent Tuesday afternoon as they arrived at their San Diego hotel, and the plan Wednesday was to encourage the wives and children of the coaching staff and support staff to visit the SeaWorld theme park.

“We’ve had a good run at home, playing teams we did business with, and now we’re looking forward to taking the show on the road.”

— BYU coach Kevin Young

A Thanksgiving feast was planned for later Wednesday night.

But make no mistake, head coach Kevin Young said in a media teleconference Wednesday morning, the Cougars are in the so-called “America’s Finest City” for one reason and one reason alone: ​​to win the Rady’s Children Invitational at UC San Diego’s LionTree Arena .

While most of America will be savoring turkey, mashed potatoes and all the other stuff, unranked BYU (5-0) will take on No. 23 Ole Miss (5-0) at 3:30 PM MST Thursday on Fox Sports 1 Purdue (5-1) and North Carolina State (5-0) are on the other side of the bracket.

The championship game is set for Friday at 4:00 p.m. MST, while the match for third place is at 1:30 p.m

“As I told our players, this is a business trip. Don’t get confused. This is a business trip and that’s what we’re here to do is take care of business,” Young said after describing the welcome reception and gave a “shoutout to the mariachi band, which was a pretty nice touch” and noted that BYU had a “pretty deep” traveling party.

Ole Miss coach Chris Beard chimed in as well, saying many of the Rebels’ players had never been to the West Coast before but wanted to focus on an undefeated BYU team before taking in the sights and sounds of San Diego.

“This game presents a lot of challenges for us,” Beard said. “I describe it this way to our players: We’re going to be in a lot of games like this this year against a lot of really talented teams in the SEC. I put BYU in the same category.”

Neither team has faced an opponent as talented as the other to date in the 2024–25 season.

Ole Miss, which is averaging 80.8 points and allowing 63.0 points, has defeated Long Island (90-60), Grambling (66-64), South Alabama (64-54), Colorado State (84-69) and Oral Roberts (100) -68).

BYU, which is averaging 91.0 points and allowing 59.8, has defeated Central Arkansas (88-50), UC Riverside (86-80), Queens (99-55), Idaho (95-71) and Mississippi Valley State (87-43) ).

“We’ve had a good run at home, playing teams that we took care of business against, and now we’re looking forward to taking the show on the road,” Young said. “This is a great tournament here in San Diego. Beautiful city, of course. Just really looking forward to competing against some of these bigger teams” that are in the tournament.

Obviously, the next three games will show just how good this BYU team really is; Next up after the tournament is a road game at Rhode Island against Providence College of the Big East. The Friars were 5-0 heading into Wednesday’s game against Oklahoma at the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas.

Young said five games against mostly overmatched teams, all at the Marriott Center in Provo, showed the staff the pieces are there for a successful season, but there is work to be done in areas like perimeter defense.

“I think our togetherness and our unselfishness has really shown for us offensively,” he said. “I think defensively we’ve made progress, (had) different focal points. Now we’ve got to do it against guys that can test us a little bit more on that end, and that’s going to be a good thing for us.”

Like almost every team in college basketball, Ole Miss has a revamped roster built from the transfer portal. Five players have scored more than 1,000 points in their college careers. Led by Jaylen Murray (14.0) and Sean Pedulla (13.3), five players are averaging more than 9.7 points per game. match.

“They are extremely experienced across the board,” Young said. “… They obviously went out and got a bunch of guys that know how to score. So we’re going to have our hands full with a bunch of different players and we’re going to have to be really good defensively.

“They’re really aggressive and catch a lot of stuff in and around the paint (on defense),” Young continued. “So I think our distance is going to be very important. I think we’ve had a good week of preparation. We were able to dive into these guys quite a bit, so I think we know , what we can expect.”

Beard cited BYU’s “dynamic point guards” — freshman Egor Demin and veteran Dallin Hall — and the Cougars’ ability to make plays inside the paint and outside the 3-point line as aspects of the team that give it a solid identity.

“It’s going to be a real challenge for our defense to guard all three levels,” Beard said. “They also do a good job of pushing the tempo and playing in the open floor.”

The 6-foot-4 Hall, a junior, played for the first time all season against MVSU after recovering from a toe injury. He had 10 points, five assists and three rebounds in 21 minutes. Hall replaced Trevin Knell in the starting lineup against the Delta Devils.

“He’s a guy that’s going to increase our 3-point volume as well. He’s a good shooter. I think he made seven 3s in that game, all of which were good shots,” Young said. “So that will increase our 3-point rate. And then just from an overall leadership standpoint — he’s one of our captains. He’s one of our leaders. … He’s really kind of an extension of me out there on the floor, to a greater extent.”

Starting point guard Keba Keita suffered an undisclosed injury against Idaho and did not play against MVSU. Young said Wednesday that the 6-foot-8 junior transfer from Utah is “progressing well” and will be a game-time decision.

“We’ll see how he feels after what we do (Wednesday afternoon),” Young said. “But everyone else is fine.”