Resurgent Cougars hit road on WCC homestretch


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PROVO — A BYU basketball season that has included as many energy-sapping heartbreaks as challenging schedule quirks now heads down the homestretch, with the Cougars this week hitting the road for back-to-back games.

With BYU firmly on the NCAA tournament bubble, every contest has the feel of an elimination game, with the Cougars' at-large hopes on the line every time they take the floor. At 17-9 on the season and possessing an RPI in the mid-40s, BYU is on the good side of the bubble with many bracketologists (ESPN's Joe Lunardi among them), projected as one of the last at-large teams in the field of 68 — but there is little if any wiggle room for Dave Rose's team.

Games this week at Pacific (Thursday) and St. Mary's (Saturday) represent unique challenges for the Cougars. BYU has never played a game at the Alex G. Spanos Center in Stockton, Calif., and will be facing the Tigers for only the second time as a West Coast Conference foe. In their meeting late last month in Provo, Pacific shot the ball particularly well (53 percent FG, 41 percent 3PFG, 81 percent FT) and had the Cougars on their heels for stretches of an eventual 88-78 BYU victory.

The Tigers have won two of three road games since losing in Provo, and have a senior-laden lineup that is finding its footing in a new league. Pacific now returns home for four of its final six league games, primed to move up a few notches in the WCC standings. Winning in Stockton will not be easy.

Meantime, the Cougars have never won at McKeon Pavilion in Moraga, having gone 0-3 all-time in the 3,500-seat facility, with two of the losses coming in WCC play. Saturday's meeting will be a sold-out affair, coinciding with the retirement of Gaels' standout Matthew Dellavedova's jersey in a halftime ceremony.

BYU's Feb. 1 win over the Gaels at the Marriott Center should give the Cougars a shot in the arm, and while St. Mary's is typically good at home again (13-1), the lone loss came to a Santa Clara team BYU has already swept.

If BYU is to extend its current four-game win streak and keep rolling toward the conference tournament in Las Vegas, the Cougars will this week require the kind of grit that carried the team to its 68-63 comeback win over San Francisco on Saturday.

On a night when BYU's prolific and efficient offense was held well below its expected standards, the Cougars found a way to grind out a key conference victory. Out-shot from the field, the arc and the stripe with an offensive efficiency rating of 97.1 (compared to 114.2 for the season), BYU hit the boards with abandon, recording a 47-29 advantage on the glass, including a 20-5 edge on the offensive end. The rebounding dominance led to a game-deciding 16-4 margin in second-chance points.

Previewing his team's upcoming two-game road swing and referencing the win over USF, Rose told KSL after the game that the Cougars "need to play every bit as hard and every bit as interested in second efforts, and winning plays, and hopefully things will go a little bit better" than they did during consecutive road losses in BYU's last two away games, at Portland and Gonzaga in late January.

"We learned a lot about ourselves (against USF) to win a game when things weren't going really smooth for us," Rose said. "We just figured out ways to make extra plays."

BYU's current four-game win streak began immediately after the road losses in Portland and Spokane, which dropped BYU to 5-4 in conference play, and into the middle of the pack in the WCC. The Cougars now head back out on the road in sole possession of second place, two-and-a-half games behind league-leading Gonzaga.

"Our guys have been through a lot this season," Rose said, "and they've been really resilient. Coming home from that (Portland/Gonzaga) road trip ... you just kind of wonder where your guys are going to be and how they're going to respond. But it's a group with a lot of character that came home and got four big wins at home, so I'm proud of them.

"We've got good things ahead of us, and we look forward to a big road trip this weekend."

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Greg Wrubell

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