Last summer, when BYU basketball coach Dave Rose and his assistants — primarily Tim LaComb — were putting together their 2018-19 non-conference schedule, they tried to find the best opponents possible to improve the strength of their schedule and perhaps impress the NCAA tournament selection committee.
Problem is, those opponents haven’t been as good as the Cougars hoped they would be. Worse, BYU isn’t beating those opponents. As a result, BYU (8-6) will have to win the West Coast Conference tournament in March to avoid missing the Big Dance for the fourth-straight year.
“I think they are hanging in there,” Rose said in a conference call Wednesday when I asked him about the morale of his guys after they lost on consecutive Saturdays to former Mountain West rivals, UNLV and San Diego State.