Cougar hoopsters prep for Maui with tourney-style schedule


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Having opened their 2014-15 campaign with a home win over Long Beach State, the BYU Cougar hoopsters will this week play home games on back-to-back nights before heading to Hawaii and next week's Maui Invitational.

Arkansas Little-Rock will visit the Marriott Center on Tuesday night, with Division III foe Southern Virginia providing the opposition on Wednesday night. Thursday will see the team take off for the islands, where three games in three days await next week.

BYU head coach Dave Rose says the accelerated early-season pace could pay off in the islands.

"Once we get to Maui, we've got to play three in a row," said Rose after practice on Monday. "If we've been through it once, we'll see how we can do when we get to Hawaii."

"I think it's great experience," said Cougar guard Tyler Haws of the game schedule over the next 10 days. "Our conference tournament, the NCAA tournament...all the games are pretty close together, so I think to get that experience this early in the season is going to be really beneficial for us."

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Like BYU, UALR is playing its second game of the regular season on Tuesday night; the Trojans opened with a 77-64 win over Division-II foe Arkansas-Monticello on Sunday.

"They look very similar to Long Beach State," Rose says. "They maybe won't attack as quickly as Long Beach State did, but the ball is going to get raced up the court. They press a little bit more."

"Hopefully, we're just as good offensively (as BYU was against LBSU) and we can slow them down a little bit more."

"They're really athletic," said Haws on Monday. "They're kind of like the team we just played. They like to push it in transition. They've got a few guys who can really get it going. They'll just play hard for 40 minutes--it's a good challenge for us."

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Rose is monitoring the health of two of his players in particular, with both Kyle Collinsworth (knee) and Nate Austin (back) easing their way into the regular season.

Collinsworth was on a "pitch-count" of sorts in each of the last two games, playing 13 minutes in both BYU's exhibition finale and season opener. Rose was hoping that by the time the Maui Invitational arrived, Collinsworth would be less constricted by a limit on minutes.

"We'll just have to see with Kyle and what we do in the back-to-back situation (this week)," said Rose, "and hopefully he can respond on Wednesday and we'll go from there."

"Kyle feels good; he feels really good. He's really anxious to get to the point where minutes in the game aren't an issue for him. Hopefully that's what we can accomplish here in the next couple of games."

Rose said that after playing 26 minutes against Long Beach State, Austin was "pretty sore on Saturday, but feels way better today, so he'll obviously play on Tuesday. We'll see how he feels on Wednesday."

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Tuesday night's game tips at 7:30 p.m. MST; you can hear pregame coverage on KSL Newsradio starting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday night's game has a 7:00 p.m. tipoff, with radio pregame coverage on the air at 6:00 p.m.

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Greg Wrubell

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