BYU Basketball: Dave Rose appears on BYU Sportsnation

As part of basketball media day, BYU Cougars head coach Dave Rose joined BYU Sportsnation to talk basketball. Right from the start he came out swinging as he mentioned that there were going to be some changes in the officiating for the West Coach Conference.  The arbiter for the WCC is also arbitrating multiple other leagues which will give the WCC a larger pool of officials to pull from.  Everyone who watched the WCC last year seemed to have something to say about the officiating in a negative way. This was brought up as Jarom Jordan and Spencer Litton were teasing Coach Rose about how he threw his jacket  after a bad call during the WCC tournament against Gonzaga.

Coach Rose also talked about the benefit of the trip to Spain.  He said that this trip helped the group move on from the graduation of all-time leading scorer Tyler Haws and glue guy extraordinaire Anson Winder.  The trip allowed the team to start working out in August and the coaching staff focused on working with the guys in small groups and trying to improve the skill of the team.  One of the benefits of the trip according to Rose is that it showed that this year's team has the depth and size on the front-line that he doesn't feel he has ever had.  He also said that because of the departure of the graduating seniors that there are a lot more minutes to be had by the newer guys coming in.  This gave those younger guys a reason to be more motivated in their workouts because they have an opportunity to play immediately and contribute.

Coach Rose also addressed the schedule and spoke about how hard it is to place BYU in an early season tournament because so many of them play on Sunday.  This year the team is playing in the Diamondhead Classic in Hawaii.  He even joked around about how the WCC schedule makers made the schedule more difficult saying, "They scheduled six of our first eight games on the road, so they really helped us out."

Coach said that he feels that this team is much more balanced than in years past.  This balance should allow BYU to compete a little better for the conference title.  He specifically mentioned that because of the lack of depth Kyle Collinsworth was asked to rebound much more than you would usually ask your point guard to rebound.

This was a fun interview which hopefully is the kick-off to another fun season of BYU Men's Basketball.