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PROVO — By the end of Thursday night’s men’s basketball game in the Marriott Center, BYU will have seen three of the West Coast Conference’s four new coaches in the league — all at home.
San Francisco’s Kyle Smith will be the third — but his team isn’t playing like a squad in transition.
A year after a 15-15 season and the firing of former coach Rex Walters, the Dons are off to an 11-6 start that included a pair of wins over Utah and Illinois State in the Diamond Head Classic in Hawaii.
Next up: a trip to Provo to face BYU (12-5, 3-1 WCC), which is 15-6 all-time against USF, at 7 p.m. MT Thursday night.
“I’ve known Kyle for years, and even more in passing. He was the assistant coach with Randy (Bennett) at Saint Mary’s, and we crossed paths recruiting,” BYU coach Dave Rose said of the former Columbia head coach. “This group of guys that he has right now is him trying to take the former coach’s players playing the way he wants them to. I think the starting group is the one that executes the way you will see his program play.”
Walters was criticized during his tenure at USF for having good plays leave the program after one or two seasons, but ironically, Smith is still dealing with the results of running a new system that includes veteran players from the old set.
That makes them particularly difficult to defend, too.
“Their bench has outscored the opponent’s bench by a couple hundred points,” Rose said, “so it’s a really disciplined group that starts and their offensive system reminds me a lot of Princeton, and the defensive system has a lot of Saint Mary’s.”
Ronnie Boyce has started just nine of 17 games of the Dons, but leads the team in scoring with 16.0 points and 4.0 rebounds per game. He’s led the Dons in scoring in eight games, including a 31-point outing at UC Santa Barbara in the second game of the season Nov. 16.
“Ronnie Boyce is as good of an offensive player as there is in the league,” Rose said. “That’s an issue.”
USF averages 38.4 percent from 3-point range as a team but has four players shooting above 40 percent from deep with eight players who have made nine or more triples this season.
Defending the 3-point line will be critical for BYU — but knowing who to defend at the line becomes a problem, too.
“This team is a very good shooting team. They can shoot the lights out,” said freshman TJ Haws on BYUtv. “We’re going to have to defend the 3-point line really well, and it will be a good challenge for us. Those teams can run away from a game really easily.”
Haws, a 43-percent shooter himself, and USF freshman Charles Minlend are the top two scoring freshmen in the WCC, averaging 13.3 and 10.6 points per game, respectively.
The two have proven to be key contributors in thejr first official season of Division I basketball.
Even if Haws, who returned last spring from a two-year mission for the LDS Church in France, doesn’t always feel like a freshman.
“I feel like I’ve had a lot of experience in my life,” Haws said. “I played against good competition all growing up, so I feel like this is just a continuation of what I’ve been doing my whole life. I don’t feel super young.”
The Cougars are young overall, with just one senior on the active roster. And that’s led to some growing pains — but also hopes that their best days are ahead.
“Our team hasn’t played a lot together. But we know when to make the right plays,” said Elijah Bryant, who scored a team-high 17 points in BYU’s 91-62 win over Pacific on Saturday. “If I have a good shot, I can give it up for a great shot. Everyone can contribute in that way.”
