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BYU basketball head coach Dave Rose previewed West Coast Conference tournament week during Tuesday night's KSL Newsradio broadcast of Rose's weekly show at Legends Grille.
Senior Craig Cusick also came on to talk about his BYU career and the challenge ahead for the Cougars.
You can hear the entire broadcast in "Cougar Cuts," to the left.
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BYU's regular season featured an eighth consecutive "20/10": 20+ wins with 10+ wins in conference, plus two All-WCC selections in Brandon Davies and Tyler Haws. BYU has had at least one all-league pick in 16 straight seasons.
A seventh consecutive NCAA Tournament berth remains a tall task, with BYU currently on the outside looking in on the field of 68.
To punch that seventh straight Big Dance ticket, BYU will have to roll some hot dice in Las Vegas.
"I think everybody knows that that's what needs to happen here," said Rose. "We're in a situation where we need to go down and win this (WCC) tournament and there's not really a lot of hope to enter the (NCAA) tournament any other way. I can kind of feel the real sense of urgency from our guys and hopefully we respond."
Cusick talked about how this situation has affected the team saying, "The vibe around the team and the coaches is great. Everyone's positive and everyone's confident, obviously every team wants to be playing their best right now at this time of the year, so that's what we're trying to get to in the next few days, to make sure that we can have a good run in our conference tournament."
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The Cougars will have an uphill battle as a 3 seed, but Rose knows it's imperative his guys play it one game at a time.
"The most important thing for our guys right now is to prepare for a real battle on Friday night," said Rose. "Whoever that ends up being, hopefully we can be ready and prepared and be able to win that and move on to Saturday."
BYU will meet the winner of Thursday night's second round meeting between 6 seed San Diego and 7 seed Pepperdine.
Cusick recognizes the challenge for the Cougars, but pointed out that unexpected results can happen during these tournaments.
"Knowing that we have to go in and win it all, it just makes it more exciting," Cusick said. "We've just got to make sure we go out with a lot of confidence, because it gets done every year by many teams throughout the country."
"Many teams step up and they win their conference tournament and they have a chance to play in March Madness. We're looking forward to that opportunity to try and do what we can."
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Looking ahead to his team's potential quarterfinal matchups, Rose identified strengths of both the Toreros and Waves.
"San Diego will drive that thing up and really look for an easy shot in transition or a quick shot in transition," said Rose. "If they don't get it then they're going to bring the ball out and those guards are going to control the tempo for a while, and then they will run a set late in the shot clock and that's what you are going to see."
"Pepperdine is a team that defensively is very solid, but they try to control the tempo of the game through their offense. They really work the ball and try to keep the score really low and then physically they beat you up pretty good defensively."
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Coverage of BYU v. either San Diego or Pepperdine will, air Friday night with the pre-game broadcast starting at 8:30 p.m. MST and tip-off at 9:30. The game will be broadcast on KSL Newsradio 102.7 FM/1160 AM and BYU Radio (SiriusXM 143).
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