Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
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BYU basketball head coach Dave Rose talked about a rough week and what's next for the Cougars on Monday night's KSL Newsradio broadcast of Rose's weekly show at Legends Grille.
Guard Matt Carlino was also on the program and talked about how BYU can bounce back from last week's two difficult losses.
You can hear the entire show in "Cougar Cuts," left.
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A Cougar comeback fell short last Thursday at San Diego, with the Toreros picking up their first-ever win over BYU, 74-68. Two days later, BYU played San Francisco at home and watched a 15-point second-half lead evaporate as the Dons shot 72 percent from the field in the second half, including 9-for-10 from beyond the arc, in a 99-87--USF's first-ever win in Provo. As jarring as both losses were, Rose talked about the difficulty of making substantial changes to the team after suffering back to back loses.
"I think every week we go into the week trying to figure out how we can grow our team and how we can expand it," Rose said. "When you take a setback like this and you get beat a few times you feel like there are things you need to do to make changes, but you can't reinvent your team at this time of the year either. So it's a pretty delicate mix."
Rose then spoke about what plans he has for the team this upcoming week with only one game on Saturday versus the Portland Pilots.
"We will try to get them a little bit of rest," said Rose. "Maybe give them some time to where they can catch up on their schoolwork. But the most important thing is to make sure that we go into that game feeling confident with our game plan, confident with some of the adjustments that we made and that our bodies feel good as we get started on a pretty difficult swing."
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Matt Carlino also spoke about the tough road the Cougars have ahead of them. He focused on what the team must do to restore its confidence.
"We just have to put the bad stuff behind us and just keep believing in what we can do well. Everyone on the whole team, just have confidence in each other, have confidence in ourselves and try to just keep improving. Like coach said, improving on what we do well, and just build on all that stuff, what everyone does well and I think we will be alright."
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Relative to postseason possibilities, the Cougars know they will likely have to win the West Coast Conference Tournament to nail down a seventh consecutive NCAA Tournament berth. Rose explained how this year will be different for his team heading into the tournament as the Cougars will go from "everybody trying to knock us off to us trying to knock someone else off." Rose pointed out what BYU has to do from here on out to reach the team's goals.
"Just to regroup mentally and realize how important each game is and to really strive to get better and improve our team so we get into that tournament in a few weeks and we can start with that first game, get a win and then try to advance through the tournament and win it."
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For now all the Cougars can do is sit, wait, and practice, no matter how much they just want to
