Games to Look Forward to: BYU at Stanford

Apr 2, 2013; New York, NY, USA; Brigham Young Cougars players react during the second half of the NIT Tournament semifinal against the Baylor Bears at Madison Square Garden. Baylor won the game 76-70. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

On November 11th, BYU will travel to Palo Alto to take on the Stanford Cardinal in a late night, ESPN game. This is BYU’s first marquee game on their 2013-2014 schedule, and it comes very early in the season. The game will be aired at 10 PM MST as apart of the ESPN’s tip-off marathon.

BYU fans are blessed with the opportunity to watch the highly touted incoming freshman, Eric Mika, against a high quality opponent. Mika will likely go toe to toe with Stanford big man Dwight Powell, who is one of the better post players in the nation. Mika’s performance against Powell could be indicitive to the amount of growing pains that Mika will go through in his freshman season.

These two teams have some intriguing back courts that will match up with each other, in addition to the Mika-Powell. Matt Carlino and Tyler Haws will battle against Stanford’s Aaron Bright and Chasson Randle. Bright is a 9 point, 3 assist kind of guy, and Randle averaged 13.6 points per game last season. BYU appears to have the advantage in this particular match up, but they certainly cannot take this duo of guards for granted.

This will be a great game for BYU in the short and long term. The Cougars have some young players that can take this game as a growing experience, and this is a game on the schedule that helps your RPI. More importantly, it’s going to be a flat out fun game to watch.