How has Saint Mary’s risen to a Top 25 basketball program in the WCC? Can BYU do it, too?

Playing connected, disciplined basketball and valuing every possession. Those traits — and attention to sticky, team-oriented defense — have carried the Saint Mary’s men’s basketball program to national prominence.

With the help of fiery new assistant coach Heath Schroyer, BYU coach Dave Rose is trying to instill those attributes into his own program this season in an attempt to get the Cougars out of the good-but-not-great rut they’ve been in the past half-dozen years.

“I would say it is safe to say right now that they are in a little run of probably their best teams that they’ve had in the history of their program,” Rose said about the No. 16 Gaels, who are 19-2. “They are pretty impressive, yup.”

Having come close to knocking off West Coast Conference-leading Saint Mary’s (8-0) in Provo last month before falling 74-64 in overtime, the Cougars (17-4, 6-2) get another shot Thursday (9 p.m. MST) at McKeon Pavilion. Coach Randy Bennett’s team has won 14 straight games — one shy of its program high, set in 2008-09 — and is coming off a road sweep of two of the other top three teams in the conference, Gonzaga and Pacific.

“You look over the years, and [basketball] is obviously a really high priority at their school,” Rose said. “They have had really good coaches in there, and the coaches that have moved on have been really successful over the years. They have had really good teams.”

Bennett inherited a 2-27 team when he arrived in 2001 and has become the small, private Catholic school’s all-time wins leader with 384 victories. He has taken the Gaels to the NCAA Tournament six times, and a seventh appearance in March is almost a lock.

The NCAA placed the program on probation in 2013 for recruiting violations and “failure to monitor its men’s basketball program” and stripped two scholarships apiece in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons. Bennett was suspended for five games and there were other penalties, but the program has recovered nicely.

A big reason is Bennett’s successful system, of course, along with the emergence of three seniors — Australians Jock Landale and Emmett Naar and sharpshooter Calvin Hermanson, who is from Oregon.

“They are very, very good at executing late in the game when it is really close,” Rose said. “The three [close] road games that they have won, they were tremendous. They were all one-possession games, and they made the play. It is a step we really need to get to.”

But while BYU is trying to emulate the on-court style of Saint Mary’s, it isn’t trying to establish itself with international players as the Gaels have done, particularly players from Australia. BYU is the only program in the WCC without an international player. Most teams have several.

Saint Mary’s has six Australians on its 2017-18 roster. It had a school-record seven Australians last season. NBA players Patty Mills and Matthew Dellavedova both came to SMC from the Australian Institute of Sport, as did Landale, who is eighth in the country in field goal percentage (65.7), 12th in scoring (22.4 ppg) and 16th in rebounding (10.2 rpg).

“Whatever it is, a pipeline or a partnership, it is a big part of our program,” Bennett said in 2016.

Bennett’s reputation is so good in the Land Down Under that many Australians have signed with Saint Mary’s before visiting the campus in the rolling hills east of Oakland, including Adam Caporn, the first Aussie Bennett signed in 2001. Center Daniel Kickert came next, and Saint Mary’s has had at least one Australian on its roster ever since.

Gaels assistant Marty Clarke, coach at the AIS from 2003 to 2010, has kept the pipeline flowing. Australian flags dot 3,500-seat McKeon during games, and locals have embraced the international players wholeheartedly.

But it is the way the Gaels execute that has Rose more concerned than the makeup of their team. Landale was 13 of 15 from the floor, 5 of 9 from the free-throw line, and finished with 31 points in the Dec. 30 game at the Marriott Center.

“Jock has got unbelievable skill, and he has worked hard and he has a skill set that is really hard to manage,” Rose said. “But the guys playing around Jock are really, really [helpful]. Their emphasis is to get the ball to Jock. And Jock gets the ball on the left block 30, 40 times a game. And we are talking about a team that might be playing with 61, 62 possessions, and that’s where he gets the ball. Obviously you got to give Jock a lot of credit for as good as he’s been. But these guys get him the ball, and then he is really smart with it.”