In the interest of full disclosure, the last time I saw BYU play was in the first round game of last year’s tournament when we, and Josh Carter in particular, beat them 67-60. I have however watched a lot of A&M basketball since then, so I am a bit less clueless than the talking heads. In fact, I have watched enough of A&M basketball to call their first offensive play: turnover by Brian Davis. While BYU plays great defense, allowing 10 fewer points per 100 possessions than the D1 average, they only cause an average turnovers. So this one is all Brian Davis, he just loves giving up the rock to start the game. In fact, a bunch of our guys just hate not turning it over, which is very dangerous considering how fast BYU likes to play⎯ they are the 10th fastest team in the tourney. If we commit a lot of turnovers, or get into one of our notorious 15 minute scoring droughts, then the we will find them ourselves on the bad end of a 12 point run.

Basketball isn’t transitive, but in the absences of any other real insight it will have to do. Both BYU and A&M played Tulsa early in the season, BYU won by six and A&M lost by 11. This tells us exactly nothing. You will never get those 7 seconds back.

My call, A&M by 10.