Winning at the "Right Time of Year"...

Much has been made about the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee's emphasis on the "stretch run" when considering teams' postseason portfolios, with the Committee reportedly looking more closely these days at the final 12 games of the season in particular.

As such, Dave Rose's Cougars have excelled in putting their best foot forward at the right time of year, year in and year out.

In Rose's three seasons, BYU has lost the following number of regular season games in February and March (including MWC Tournament, but excluding NIT/NCAA):

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2006

February: 1

March: 1

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2007

February: 1

March: 1

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2008

February: 1

March: ?

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The Cougars will certainly be rewarded with yet another postseason appearance, in no small measure due to the fact that the Cougars under Dave Rose get better as the season gets longer. Not every team plays its best basketball in February and March, but Rose's teams have acquired the knack for doing so.

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With only a week left in the regular season, it's interesting to see which teams have performed to expectations, and which teams have underachieved.

What follows are the current conference standings, with the predicted preseason finish in parentheses:

1. BYU (1)

2. UNLV (2)

3. New Mexico (4)

4. SDSU (4)

5. Air Force (8)

5. TCU (7)

5. Utah (3)

8. Wyoming (6)

9. Colorado State (9)

One can debate the worth of preseason prognostications, but as you can see, only Utah and Wyoming have performed worse than expected, with every other team either playing to or exceeding expectation.

While the Ute staff is preaching patience, it's clear that with four starters and two all-conference honorees returning, the Utes were expected to be better than 6-7 at this point of the season. Utah finished 7th in the final conference standings last season, and a similar standing is possible this time around.

Wyoming finished 5th last season, but unlike Utah, was picked lower this season, despite the return of Brad Jones and Brandon Ewing. Anyone close to the Pokes program or Coach Heath Schroyer knew this would be a rebuilding year, even with Jones and Ewing back, and winning at Utah and coming back from down 18 the other night in Fort Collins shows the team has some spunk, although a finish higher than 8th is unlikely.

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By the way, the Mountain West Confernce media have actually done a pretty good job picking the eventual conference champion. In this, the 9th season of the league's existence, the media will have predicted the champion correctly 5 times (assuming BYU finishes no worse than in a tie for the title this season). In the other 4 seasons in question, the preseason pick to win the league championship finished 2nd once, 3rd once, and 4th twice.

A MWC championship for BYU this season would be the team's 4th, although the Cougars have been the preseason pick to win the league only twice. This year would be the first time BYU has won the league after being picked to win it in the preseason.

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If the Cougars win out, Dave Rose's conference win total will have increased in each of his three years on the job; from 12 in 2005, to 13 in 2007, to 14 in 2008. No MWC team has ever won more than 13 conference games in a season. In 2005, Utah went 13-1 with only 14 conference games, while in each of the last two seasons, the conference champ has gone 13-3.

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