PROVO — The NCAA Tournament is still months away, but the BYU basketball team has notched a couple of non-conference wins that figure to enhance its status in March.
For now, the Cougars are looking to build on their early-season success.
BYU, the Mountain West Conference favorite, earned its fifth straight victory and improved to 6-1 following Saturday's thrashing of a talented Pac-10 squad, Southern California, 85-61. A week earlier, the Cougars dispatched then-nationally ranked Oklahoma State of the Big 12. Those are the types of wins that should impress the NCAA Tournament selection committee and benefit the Cougars in the seeding process.
Certainly, Trojan coach Henry Bibby went away impressed with BYU. Bibby, who watched center Rafael Araujo score 28 points and pull down 11 against his team, already has the Cougars penciled in the Big Dance.
"We played against a Tournament team tonight," he said. "(Araujo) will take them a long ways, with (Mark) Bigelow and people like that on the side. They're a tough team. I just don't want to see them anymore."
While the Cougars belong to a so-called "mid-major" conference, Bibby said BYU "is not a mid-major team, that's for sure. This team is probably as good as any in the country right now, the way they play. They're well-coached. They do a lot of good things out on the floor."
Cougar guard Kevin Woodberry said he likes where BYU is at this point in the season, but he adds there's room for improvement. "We have a lot of things to work on, a lot of things to get better at on offense and on defense," he said. "We're halfway there. You don't want to reach your peak this early in the season anyway. You want to reach your peak in March."
The Cougars have six non-conference games left on the schedule, including a trip to North Carolina State of the Atlantic Coast Conference on Jan. 7, before opening league play at San Diego State on Jan. 12. Next up for BYU is a pair of tough in-state games as it hosts Weber State on Saturday and visits Utah State on Dec. 23.
"We're one of those teams where everybody's going to be trying to kick our butts," Woodberry said. "We have to bring our 'A' game every night or we're going to get surprised if we're not ready for it. That's one of the big things we're going to work on this year — to treat everyone like they're a ranked opponent."
In other words, don't count on BYU overlooking Weber State, especially considering the Wildcats handed the Cougars a humbling 75-69 setback in Ogden a year ago.
"It's kind of a revenge game because they got us up there last year. They gave it to us pretty good at their place," Woodberry recalled. "We weren't expecting that. That was a game everybody thought we should have won, but we didn't start playing until the last 10 minutes of the second half. We can't let that happen again. We have to take it to them early and try to prove a point early, just like we did (against USC)."
ROBERTS' DEPARTURE: Tendonitis has robbed BYU junior guard Marc Roberts of the remainder of his basketball career. Roberts, who suffers from tendonitis in his knees, informed coach Steve Cleveland Friday of his decision to quit the team.
"He just came in and said, 'Coach, I just can't do this anymore. I can't play the way I was during the summer. The tendonitis is just killing me. I don't want to be out here playing if I can't be 100 percent,' " Cleveland said. "Marc's married and he's not on scholarship. He has other responsibilities. I understand. You're talking about a young man that every day brought it 100 percent. For the 2 1/2 years he was with us, he was the most coachable young man on the floor. He's the consummate team player. I'm going to really miss him because he was part of what we're doing. He's been a big part of our success, guarding guys like Mark Bigelow in practice, helping him get better.
"It's time for him to move on," Cleveland continued. "The thing that made him special was his athleticism, his quickness, his ability to jump. You take away all of his athleticism and quickness because of bad knees, at 6-foot-1, it becomes difficult to compete at this level."
Roberts, the son of former Cougar Glen Roberts, was averaging 8.6 minutes and 1.6 points per game for BYU.
E-MAIL: jeffc@desnews.com