By: Jay Yeomans
Published: July 27, 2018
Despite adding a quality inside player in Jack Cooley, there are still people who doubt that Team Fredette has what it takes to win The Basketball Tournament.
One of them is Danny Holdsman, who did the TBT Super 16 power rankings, where he had the team featuring three former Cougars at the No. 9 spot.
Speaking of Team Fredette, Holdsman wrote, “Jimmer put on a show and led his team to the Super 16; but does this team have what it takes to win it all? I doubt it. Team Fredette seems to be too much of a one-man show.”
After talking about the addition of Cooley, Holdsman continued, “Cooley or not, Team Fredette needs some other guys to step up in a way that I don’t foresee if it wants its TBT debut to go further than a quarterfinal matchup against Scarlet and Gray.”
Calling Team Fredette a “One-man show” is an interesting take when you consider that Brandon Davies is averaging 17 points a contest and Ra’Shad James is netting 15.5 points a night in the first two games.
The Fort Wayne Champs, who Team Fredette play on Friday night, came in at No. 15 in the rankings.
BYU is middle of the pack in quality wins
College Football News ranked all 130 Div. 1 football programs based on quality wins over the last five years and BYU landed at No. 54 with 11 such victories. That tied them with Power 5 schools West Virginia, Duke and Arkansas as well as Air Force and North Texas.
Not exactly elite, but not a bad spot either when you consider that 17 Power 5 schools were ranked below the Cougars.
2018 game-by-game predictions
The same website also predicted each game for the Cougars for the 2018 season, and it doesn’t look good.
The site estimates that the Cougars will go 5-1 at home, but will get shutout on the road to finish the season with a 5-7 record. While that would be an upgrade over the 2017 campaign, missing a second straight bowl game would put Kalani Sitake squarely in the cross hairs of a lot of angry Cougar fans.
Athlon Sports released their game-by-game predictions for the Cougars as well and only two of the four writers polled have the Cougars becoming bowl eligible.
Mitch Harper is the highest on the Cougars of the four writers, having them with a 7-5 record including a 6-0 record at home and a win over UMass.
Bryan Fischer has the Cougars at 6-6 while both Steven Lassan and Mitch Light see BYU going 5-7.
JMoneySports 
I personally like it when the pundits doubt BYU will do well. Expectations were way too high last year and fans were not prepared for the disappointment. Here’s hoping the the Cougars will surprise the “experts” and win far more than expected.
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Everyone is just speculating right now based off last year. Hopefully the new coaching staff and the new fire will translate into more wins.
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Last year is in the trash can… this is BYU! The Cougars will leave a lot of egg on these negative knucklehead prognosticator’s faces. Rather than predicting reliably, they are just playing it safe, and basing it all on last year’s freak anomaly. This is Y… BYU will win at least 8-4.
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You’re right. They are just playing it safe based on what they saw last season plus a difficult road schedule. Hopefully those low expectations will be a motivator for players and coaches.
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