BYU embarks on rugged three-game road stretch looking for improvement

Malibu, Calif. • Just after they took the floor Thursday night against Pepperdine, the BYU Cougars learned they couldn’t win a piece of the West Coast Conference regular season championship.

That’s because Gonzaga routed Loyola Marymount in Spokane, making it mathematically impossible for BYU to catch the Bulldogs in the standings. Saint Mary’s which was tied with the Zags for the league lead, played late at San Francisco.

Still, BYU went into this crucial three-game trip knowing there was still a lot on the line, and also knowing it had a lot of room for improvement.

“Well, we have a lot of things we need to get better at,” coach Dave Rose said Tuesday. “Hopefully, offensively we can play together, make the right reads, make open shots, be aggressive in attacking opportunities. But the important thing is to get your team playing its best basketball, and hopefully we can do that.”

Rose said that the three-game trip the last two weeks of the season “stuck out” when the WCC schedule was released last fall.

“It is a tough challenge,” Rose said. “When we got the schedule, we knew this would be a tough stretch to try and get through.”

Pepperdine backed off BYU point guard Jahshire Hardnett, daring the sophomore to shoot. He did just that, misfiring from 3-point range twice. Rose immediately went to McKay Cannon off the bench, and Cannon hit a 3-pointer in the first half.

“I think that Jahshire has kinda gone up and down and up and down a little bit and now he has kinda plateaued off,” Rose said of Hardnett’s shooting. “We have spent a lot of time with him the last two days just talking about the spots that are open for him to be a lot more aggressive, and hopefully he will see that.”

Rose said he wants Hardnett to be more aggressive offensively.

“But when I evaluate his game on the other side of the ball, I think it has just been a sheer upward trend as far as his defensive effort and the defensive effectiveness that he has given to this team, being able to guard the ball, get it stopped.”

Officials were Mike Scyphers, Jimmy Casas and Jeff Wooten. … Rose went with the bigger starting lineup for the fourth-straight game, going with Luke Worthington, Yoeli Childs, Elijah Bryant, TJ Haws and Hardnett. …. Just 17 Pepperdine students were in its student section when the starting lineups were announced in the Waves’ first game since they announced that seven-year coach Marty Wilson would not be back next season. … Seldom-used freshman guard Rylan Bergersen played significant minutes in the first half and went 1 of 2 from the free-throw line, the first free throws of his career.