Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
For the first time in 23 years, the BYU Cougars are a top five college basketball program.
The latest polls out today have BYU 3rd in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches Top 25 Poll and 3rd in the AP Top 25. For one week in February of 1988, an undefeated BYU team was as high as 2nd in the coaches' poll and 3rd in the AP survey.
This will be the 28th consecutive week that BYU has been ranked in the AP Top 25 (four weeks short of the BYU record), and it is the school single-season record-setting 17th consecutive week that BYU has been nationally ranked.
BYU has also extended a school record by being ranked in the AP Top 10 for a seventh consecutive week.
*******
BYU's Jimmer Fredette is a Mountain West Conference Player of the Week for an eighth time this season and record-extending 15th time in his career. The honor is the ninth of the season for BYU, setting a new conference record (SDSU has had eight weekly citations this season). This week, Fredette shares the award with UNLV's Tre'von Willis.
*******
BYU is the only Mountain West Conference team to finish the regular season with two home games. BYU hosts New Mexico Wednesday night and Wyoming on Saturday afternoon. The Cougars are on a 12-game homecourt win streak; the last team to beat BYU in Provo was New Mexico on February 27th, 2010, in BYU's regular season home finale.
Fredette was sick during that game, scoring 6 points in only 16 minutes of play.
*******
BYU remains in the thick of the #1 NCAA Tournament seed discussion. ESPN's Joe Lunardi currently projects BYU as a 1 seed in the West Region.
BYU has retained its top ranking in the RPI; as I noted a couple of weeks ago in "Cougar Tracks", the #1 team in regular season-ending RPI has been a 1 or 2 seed in the last five NCAA Tournaments, and in fact, over the last six tournaments, 23 of the 24 teams in the top four of the RPI ended up as 1 or 2 seeds.
BYU's best-ever seeding was as a 3 seed in 1980.
*******
Tune in to KSL Radio tonight at 7:00pm for "BYU Basketball with Head Coach Dave Rose." The coach and I will be joined by player guest Jackson Emery live at Legends Grille on the BYU campus; BYU fans are always encouraged to come on down and enjoy the broadcast.
If you would like to submit a question for the coach on tonight's show, just fill out the linked form.
*******
