PROVO — During a 45-minute question-and-answer session with local media Wednesday, BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe was asked if he was happy with the performance of the Cougar basketball team and the coaching staff.
“I was Saturday night,” Holmoe said, referring to BYU’s stunning 79-71 upset over No. 1 Gonzaga at The Kennel.
The Cougars (21-10) finished No. 3 in the West Coast Conference and suffered humbling losses to teams like Utah Valley University, San Diego and Pepperdine.
Barring an amazing run — three straight wins — in the upcoming WCC tournament in Las Vegas, BYU is likely headed to the National Invitation Tournament again.
“People are impatient with lack of exceptional results. It’s been an up-and-down year, as (coach) Dave (Rose) would say,” Holmoe said. “I know each one of those players extraordinarily well. I believe in each one of those players. We saw great flashes of brilliance in some tough, tough times. I like the fact that we have a young team and they have a couple of years together. I feel good about the present and the future. I’m eager to go down to the conference championship and see if they can put a few (wins) together. People are nervous about that. We’ll see which way it goes. It’s a young team and a talented team. It’s a team that has been prone to making mistakes.”
BYU, the No. 3 seed in the WCC tournament, takes on No. 6 Loyola Marymount Saturday (2 p.m., MST, BYUtv) in the quarterfinals.
PREPARING FOR THE TOURNAMENT: The Cougars haven't won a conference tournament since 2001, but their confidence was boosted by virtue of the win at Gonzaga. Still, Rose knows it will take more than that to have a WCC successful tournament.
“Their attitudes are good and there’s a positive vibe. We’re not as active as I would like us to be,” Rose said. “We have two more (practices) to go. I don’t feel right now that we have the urgency in practice that this tournament demands. When you get to this tournament, everything’s different. It’s different than your preseason games, it’s different than your conference games. There’s a real urgency level that hopefully we’ll be prepared for.”
PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Guard Elijah Bryant is the reigning WCC Player of the Week after last weekend’s effort, which included a career-high, 39-point performance in a win over Portland.
“The real improvement with the group is we’ve had a couple of weeks, especially with the guards, that they’ve been able to play a lot of minutes together,” Rose said. “Elijah’s move from the bench and playing two or three different roles off the bench and going into the starting lineup, the guys have kind of clicked together as a group. There’s a lot of room for improvement because that combination is really young. Hopefully we continue to get better and better. He was terrific last week.”
KAUFUSI’S IMPACT: Center Corbin Kaufusi played a key role in BYU’s victory over the Zags, including a putback with 17 seconds remaining that all but sealed the win.
“Corbin is way more comfortable in his basketball uniform than he was two months ago,” Rose said. “It’s taken him a while to get to that point. We’ve been able to put him in a lot of different situations in practice where he feels more confident. We’ve always had in our minds that the matchups with some of these teams with big guys, he could help us.”
INJURY UPDATE: Forward Yoeli Childs, who’s been dealing with an ankle injury, is expected to return to the starting lineup Thursday. Other than bumps and bruises, the Cougars are relatively healthy going into the tournament, Rose said.