BYU Sports

Basketball coach Dave Rose ended practice around 4:40 p.m. this afternoon, but at 5 p.m. a lot of Cougars were still on the floor, working on shooting and other things. Not sure what it means, but it is obvious this group seems to like each other.
Someone even pulled out a football, and players such as Jonathan Tavernari took turns acting like Max Hall and McKay Jacobson. Team manager Andrew May has a pretty good arm.
Rose said after the workout that his team is healthy -- “right now, things are good,” he said, when asked -- and eager to face Idaho State on Tuesday night at the Marriott Center.
“This [Idaho State] team, we are actually pretty familiar with. We have played them three or four years in a row now. Their personnel -- I think they have five or six seniors -- have played in this series two or three times. So hopefully we will know a little bit more about them when we get started tomorrow.”
Last year, the game got rather intense in Pocatello and ISU coach Joe O’Brien yelled at at least one BYU assistant coach.
But Rose said there are no ill feelings, and that he expects a “competitive, hardfought game.”
Guard Jimmer Fredette, who was named MWC Player of the Week after his 25-point outing against Bradley, said the last few days have been spent on defending ball screens, rebounding and shot selection.
“Mostly we have been working on defensive stuff. We went over a little bit how we want to guard their stuff......basically just going over the game plan and stuff we want to do in this game,” he said. “We have really worked hard at the defensive end to get better at ball screens and things of that nature.”

One of the key plays in Saturday’s BYU-New Mexico game occurred midway through the fourth quarter with BYU leading 24-13. On third-and-8, the Cougars seemingly picked up a first down on an 11-yard throw to Dennis Pitta.
But receiver O’Neill Chambers was called for offensive pass interference on the play, negating the first-down pickup.
Then, while Chambers was walking back to the BYU side of the line of scrimmage, an official approached him, said something, and threw a penalty flag for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Today, BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall explained what happened.
“The officials came over after the game -- and again, I hear different stories, usually from the players’ perspective and the official's perspective, and rarely do they match. I am sure that is not a surprise to anybody.
“From the official’s perspective, what he said was, our receiver went down, it was a deeper curl route, pushed off on the defensive back -- I have seen it on film, he pushed off hard enough to knock the guy down -- the defensive back was trying to grab him, as most do, even ours, when you are coming out of a break, if the receiver is trying to push off.
So he knocked the defensive back down. Their sideline was then, you could clearly [see] them pointing to [Chambers] and making comments.
O’Neill, then, turned to their sideline, I am not sure what he said at that point. The official threw a flag, based on a comment that I think O’Neill made to their sideline, and the official took it that he was making it to him. And that was the best explanation I got.”

BYU tight end Dennis Pitta is one of eight semi-finalists for the 2009 John Mackey Award, the Nassau County (N.Y.) Sports Commission announced today.
The Mackey Award goes to the nation’s top tight end.
The other semi-finalists are Dorin Dickerson (SR, Pittsburgh), Ed Dickson (SR, Oregon), Aaron Hernandez (JR, Florida), Anthony McCoy (SR, USC), Tony Moeaki (SR, Iowa), Kyle Rudolph (SO, Notre Dame) and Cody Slate (SR, Marshall).
The finalists will be announced Nov. 23 (next Monday) and the winner will be announced on Dec. 10.

For scoring a game-high 25 points in BYU’s 70-60 win over Bradley on Friday, Cougar guard Jimmer Fredette is the Mountain West Conference men’s basketball Player of the Week.
Fredette added five rebounds, four assists in 37 minutes. He went 12-for-14 from the three-throw line, including 6-for-6 in the last five minutes of the game.
It is the third weekly honor of Fredette’s career.

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Asher Clark (Air Force), Tank Carder (TCU) and Austyn Carta-Samuels and Ian Watts (Wyoming) are Mountain West Conference Players of the Week in football.
Clark and Carta-Samuels share Offensive Player of the Week honors, while Carder garners the Defensive Player award and Watts receives Special Teams recognition.

BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall said that the Air Force game “is always one of our favorite games of the year” at his Monday morning news conference that just ended, but defensive end Jan Jorgensen begged to differ.
Air Force’s tactics, especially its blocking tactics, are “legal, but dirty,” Jorgensen said, noting that facing the cut blocks and guarding against guys diving at his legs all game does not make playing the Falcons fun at all for a defensive player.
Mendenhall said he has the utmost respect and admiration for Air Force because of what it and its players represent, and that is why he enjoys competing against the Falcons each year.
However, the coach began his presser by calling the win over New Mexico “difficult” and he said he was proud of his team for playing well enough at the end of the game to pull it out.
Other tidbits from the news conference:
* Mendenhall said Air Force’s defense is thriving this year because both of its corners are playing extremely well and that the defense collectively is “very innovative in what they do.”
* Noting that BYU faced a lot of third-and-long situations against New Mexico, Bronco said it was because the Lobos’ were able to shut down BYU’s running game “and forced us to be one-dimensional.”
* Regarding BYU’s nicked up offensive line: Mendenhall said he left freshman Fono Vakalahi home because he of poor academic performance.
He said he expected Nick Alletto would be able to play more than he did, but believes the right tackle will be able to play this week.
* Mendenhall gave a long explanation why O’Neill Chambers was flagged for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against the Lobos when it appeared an official walked up to the receiver and said something to him.
Noting that there are two sides to every story, Mendenhall said the official explained to him that Chambers cursed at him. Chambers’ side of it was that he said something to New Mexico’s bench after they were riding him for picking up an offensive pass interference penalty a few moments earlier.
* Bronco said removing Harvey Unga from the game in the third quarter was a “wise decision” and that leaving him in may have caused Unga to worsen his ankle injury. He said Unga will be probable against Air Force.
* Lamenting Terrance Hooks’ latest knee injury, Mendenhall was close to getting emotional and said the senior linebacker will probably have surgery Tuesday if the swelling goes down enough.
He said that Shane Hunter and Brandon Ogletree will take Hooks’ place in one combination or another.
* Asked if BYU has lost its home-field advantage after dropping games to FSU and TCU at LaVell Edwards Stadium, Mendenhall said no and chalked those losses up to having too many turnovers against FSU and TCU’s talent.
“On that night, a better team beat us,” he said of TCU.
* Regarding UNLV’s firing of Mike Sanford on Sunday, Mendenhall said, “I am saddened by it.” He said he believed UNLV was “making progress” in an “honorable” way, calling Sanford “a good person and a good coach.”
* The coach said that Mitch Payne was used on kickoffs, rather than Riley Stephenson, because Payne might be a better kicker when it is windy and that coach Lamb and coach Tidwell made the decision based on performance earlier in the week at practice.
* Asked if he saw any of the Utah-TCU game, Mendenhall said “Holly [his wife] made sure we watched it.” He called TCU “a good football team” and “my opinion one of the best teams in the country.”