BYU continues to chase best in WCC

There is a saying in college sports where if a coach is asked which conference he believes is the toughest, the answer is generally identical across the country: The one in which his team plays.

Dave Rose just wanted Brigham Young basketball to land in a league good enough that it offered the opportunity for annual at-large berths into the NCAA Tournament, a conference respected enough at the top to own a national footprint.

That’s what you get when sharing space with Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s, both ranked among the Top 25 nationally to enter this season and looking every bit deserving thus far.

BYU is in its sixth season as a basketball member of the West Coast Conference, and everything Rose thought about the programs the Cougars would have to chase and catch to contend for league titles has proven accurate.

Football rules the universe, so when BYU departed the Mountain West in 2011 for a life of independence between goal posts, Rose’s program needed a home. Now, as whispers have grown louder the past six months about BYU’s entire athletic program moving back into one conference, the man who has delivered 11 straight 20-win seasons —including eight of 25 or more — and eight NCAA trips takes a similar stance as before.

Which means he doesn’t say much.

“I stay out of it,” Rose said. “The only thing I’m worried about is the schedule we have to play over the next four months. They told me the last time we might be going to the Western Athletic Conference. A couple days later, I was called into a meeting and the talk was about the WCC. I was happy with that. We were going somewhere that is really, really competitive.”

It is at its apex, and if you have watched any games this early season, one fact is fairly obvious: Those considered the best in the WCC are considerably better than their Mountain West counterparts.

In matchups that saw Saint Mary’s handle UNR and Gonzaga whip San Diego State, it appears BYU again will have to solve two impressive teams in order to contend for its first conference title — regular season or tournament — in the WCC.

It also seems as though Rose might have the roster to do so.

The side that plays Saint Louis on Monday night at 6:30 in the MGM Grand Main Event at the Grand Garden Arena is one Rose has been awaiting for years, as certain players completed Mormon missions and all the pieces finally gathered as one.

Nick Emery, TJ Haws and Eric Mika played together in record-setting fashion at Lone Peak High in northern Utah County, and their reunion now for the next three years has many in Provo believing it might lead to BYU running past the Gaels and unseating the Zags.

“We’ve really been looking forward to having this team for a long time,” Rose said. “We’ll see what kind of results we get from it, but there is an excitement in the community, for sure.”

The WCC and Mountain West are similar in basketball and yet they’re not, leagues with very good teams at the top and some really bad-to-awful ones as you move toward the center and lower half.

Rose preferred the Mountain West way of scheduling league games on Wednesday and Saturday rather than the WCC’s choice of Thursday and Saturday — an extra day to prepare is viewed invaluable by coaches — but there also are positives about BYU’s current home when comparing leagues.

“The weather is way better flying into San Diego than Laramie,” Rose said.

Here’s another difference: When the Cougars were one of the Mountain West’s best teams, winning or sharing four league titles and never finishing below second in six seasons, they often would pull away from opponents early in the second half, when things like ball skills and the ability to make shots and coaching proved the difference.

But that’s also what you get from Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s.

It’s crazy how things go sometimes. BYU has beaten Gonzaga two straight years in Spokane — the first time a conference opponent has done so since Steve Nash was running point at Santa Clara — but also has lost both home games to the Zags in those same seasons at a Marriott Center where BYU has won nearly 80 percent of its games the last four decades.

“It has definitely been interesting,” Rose said. “Gonzaga is a national program that brings in high-profile recruits and always seems to have really good guys sitting out that can step right in the next season. Saint Mary’s does a great job of coaching players for four years and coming up with a team like the one it has this year.

“Our way is totally different, with quite a few guys coming off missions, and then need to go out and win 12, 13, 15 in a row to try and break into that national barrier. We have a freshman this season who actually committed to us five years ago. That’s a long wait.”

Waited, he has, for this specific team. Now he gets to see what it can do.

Contact columnist Ed Graney at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be a heard on “Seat and Ed” on Fox Sports 1340 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.