I have thought about what this team could have been with mature Carlino. But those days will never happen.

Rose's offense is run 'n gun. While it's easy to look at Carlino and blame his failures on him, some of the fault does need to be put on Rose who preaches run 'n gun. Marquette runs a half court set offense. So, we'll see to different Carlino's.

Fischer probably suits Rose offense a bit more than Carlino as he's a bit more patient; however, Fischer plays the 2 not the 1. So comparing Fischer to Carlino is a bit like apples and oranges. If Carlino were on the team, they would not be competing for minutes against each other and in fact would probably be a very potent duo. Imagine what Carlino (one of the best passers we've seen at BYU) could do with Haws and Fischer on the court.

For the last several years one of the biggest holes in BYU's offense has been the 2. We haven't had a legit shooting guard in a long time. The last one we had was probably Emery, but even then Emery wasn't the greatest shooter.

Carlino had no 2 to work with and essentially had to play the role of a 2 while also playing PG. I certainly lean towards being a Carlino apologist, but I do think some perspective is only fair.

I really don't have a lot of faith in Halford vs better opponents and I think Nixon will be a key component to our offense if he can develop/catch up fast enough. Toolson can give Haws a breather when needed but Haws will log a lot of minutes so his development will likely be pretty slow. Just imagine if Aytes is not Red-Shirted you could then give him Worthington's minutes.

I have thought about what this team could have been with mature Carlino. But those days will never happen.

As I've made clear, besides BYU being my #1, I was born a bred a OSU Buckeye fan. So I took advantage of watching the earlier game of the evening of OSU vs. Marquette. It was nice to see what Matt Carlino was up to. He played practically the whole game as Marquette, because of injury/qualification issues, they only had 8 players dressed.

Carlino was a different player. Either he matured some over the year, or his coach had him on a short leash, but he didn't simply run down the court and launch a 3 10 seconds into the set. We seemed to then live or die by if it was an off or on night when Carlino was at BYU. Here he was the perennial point guard trying to work the ball inside. Marquette is more of a half-court offense working the in and out game. Problem for them was that OSU was run and gun and were popping the 3 one after another. Marquette fell behind eventually as I would have ran and gunned a team with only 8 players dressed as well. Overall I think it was a good thing for Carlino to leave for both sides, but I wouldn't have been sad if he had stayed.


Then I watched the BYU vs. ARLR game. First off it was almost like watching a high school game, after having watched a college level game. There was more athleticism and smoothness to both OSU and Marquette's game. It simply flowed different and was smooth. BYU scored well over the night, but I can't quite get my finger on it--it just looks very sloppy the way they do it--lacking grace and style, but somehow getting the job done.

I'll take Chase Fischer over Matt Carlino straight up, but both are good people to have on your team. I just don't think this team by committee is the answer. I think there needs to be a better, less changed rotation. After watching 4 games now I'd start Collinsworth, Haws, Fischer, Winder and Austin. Those five seem to gel well together and have a good flow about them.

Based on what I saw over the last four games, SDSU is going to beat us by a good 20 or more points.