The Picked-to-Finish-sixth BYU basketball team continued its Don Quixote look-alike tour Saturday, picking this time on the Hawaii Rainbows in a 68-65 win. Of the five teams BYU was supposed to finish below in this year's WAC race, Hawaii was one.
But the Rainbows returned to Honolulu shaking their heads like eight straight WAC victims before them, wondering just what kind of a mission these Cougars think they're on.This was the year "Easy Touch" was supposed to refer to BYU's middle name, not its better-than-.500 field-goal shooting.
The Cougars lost their head coach - Ladell Andersen, who resigned. They lost their all-American player - Michael Smith, who signed with the Celtics. And they had no heralded replacements with the exception of blue-chip recruit Randy Reid, the new coach's son - and Roger Reid redshirted him, presumably to spare him the agony.
They did have four starters coming back, but since they managed to go just 14-15 the year before, they weren't commonly known as the Fabulous Four. Kevin Santiago, Marty Haws, Steve Schreiner and Andy Toolson had spent their careers known primarily as the wind beneath Mike Smith's wings. What would they do when they had to replace him in the starting lineup with an 18-year-old freshman - namely Mark Durrant, a recruit whose choices out of high school came down to either BYU or Columbia?
Prior to the beginning of the season, Reid, the coach, was happy, after 11 seasons as a BYU assistant coach, to finally be the head coach. But, still, he wondered about the timing. "Of all the teams I've been associated with in the past 11 years," he said, "this is probably the one I'd least liked to have inherited."
He didn't say that back then. He couldn't afford to. He said that Saturday afternoon, after Hawaii had fallen to BYU for the first time in three seasons.
"In terms of ability, I know we've been better off," said Reid. "We don't have a bunch of Olajuwons. But there's something about this team. They want to win. I guess there's really a lot to say for that attitude."
How about an 18-3 record after 21 games and a 9-1 league record that includes a nine-game WAC winning streak? The Cougars can tie the conference consecutive-wins record if they get No. 10 Saturday at Utah.
Last year after 21 games, the Cougars were 10-11.
It's true, this year's schedule hasn't exactly been door-to-door through the Top 20. No Cougar victim has been ranked. But last year's schedule wasn't a trip through the stars either.
"I guess the difference is how much we wanted this season to be different," said Santiago, who, along with Haws, forms the Cougars' incumbent guardline. "We had a lot of time last summer to talk about it. We lost so many one- and two-point games last year, and we seemed to have lapses. Some games we were up, some games we weren't. We talked about changing all that, about working hard enough to turn it around."
To date, the Cougars have had seven of their 21 games - a full third - decided by three points or less. They have won all of them - including Saturday's.
Toolson - who had 25 points and 13 rebounds against Hawaii - had a similar mind-set last summer as Santiago.
"We all did," he said. "The seniors knew we had to take charge."
Toolson's contribution to the motivational movement was to print up on his new home computer the team's goals for the season. Just prior to the first practice last Oct. 15 he printed these four goals: 1. Win the WAC. 2. Win 20 games. 3. Go to the NCAA Tournament. 4. We Gotta Believe. Then he posted them in the locker room.
"We believed in ourselves all summer," said Toolson. "Although we knew nobody else did. And not without reason. Hey, we still feel like if we don't give about 110 percent we're going to get drilled. And we haven't really achieved anything yet."
True enough, if he's referring to his posted goals. Except for No. 4. The Cougars know they've got to believe in something, and have decided it might as well be themselves.