BYU NewsNet - Foundation Laid for Champion Men's Basketball Team

There is no denying the disappointment of ending a season on two back-to-back tournament losses in two back-to-back years, but the Cougars' remarkable 27-8 run should not be discarded as though there were flies in the soup. At a university wherein both the basketball and football teams have dominated the conference for two years in a row, it's easy to let BYU's premature postseason exit strangle the pride that should accompany participating in March Madness at all.

"For the players who are leaving, graduating and going on missions, I've met with them and let them realize that, even though they're disappointed with the way the season ended, the majority of their thoughts about our team have to be the good things we've accomplished," BYU coach Dave Rose said. "They'll be able to return to the Marriott Center and see the banner of their conference championship, and that's something they can be really proud of."

This year's squad won 25 regular season games, a BYU program record, and is on its way to becoming the only Mountain West Conference team to have won two conference championships outright. They stretched the school's all-time home-court winning streak to 47 games, currently the best in the country, and have an AP All-America honorable mention in junior guard Lee Cummard.

Even after all that, the first-round win that's been eluding BYU's basketball teams for 15 years was still out of reach, but that's no reason for fans to throw the baby out with the bathwater. "It stings pretty hard, but it's just the nature of the business," Rose said.

"It's our responsibility as players and as coaches to work a little bit harder so that the next time we get that opportunity we're in a position where we make a couple more plays," he said. "That sounds pretty simple, but that's basically it. You watch these games and see how they come down to two teams playing each other that really aren't used to losing. And somebody makes one more play, then the game's over."

The season's fizzled finale tends not only to cast a pall on the past but to deflate hopes for the future as well. Looking ahead, however, the 2008-09 Cougars should have nothing but hope. Leading scorers Cummard and Trent Plaisted will be playing for keeps in their last year at BYU and Jonathan Tavernari, the Cougars' 3-point ace, will return as a junior.

The squad takes a hit at the guard positions without Sam Burgess and Ben Murdock, who, along with Vuk Ivanovic, are graduating and moving on. Freshmen Chris Collinsworth and Nick Martineau are leaving at the end of the semester to serve LDS missions in Australia and Chile, respectively. Apart from them, this year's record-breaking team is coming back for an encore, including diamond-in-the rough freshman guard Jimmer Fredette, who proved himself a worthy point-guard heir through increasing minutes in increasingly pressure-filled games.

Lamont Morgan, Jr., James Anderson and Matt Pinegar finally get to swap their button-down shirts and ties for jerseys after red-shirting this past season. Anderson, a McDonald's All-America nominee from Page, Ariz., is a 6-10 forward/center that can hop right into the void left by Collinsworth, while 6-0 Pinegar and 5-10 Morgan are ready to roam the perimeter. After walking on the team in 2006-07, big man Gavin MacGregor, 6-10, is also ready to resume his duties in the post after a yearlong hiatus from a foot injury.

Also returning is sophomore Jackson Emery, who played in 28 games of the 2005-06 season as a true freshman before an LDS mission. Emery, a 6-3 guard, is capable of making up for the loss of Murdock's sticky perimeter defense. Newcomers include true freshmen Noah Hartsock and Charles Abouo, 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-4, respectively. Hartsock is a forward capable of knocking down threes, and Abouo is an athletic guard that will fit right in to the Cougars' up-tempo offense.

"The biggest thing that we can do to improve is to maybe become a little more diversified in how we play," Rose said. "We rely on a certain style for us to really be successful and there are times when it becomes really hard to play that way, and we can become better at adjusting to different things people do to us."