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BYU coach Dave Rose and freshman center Corbin Kaufusi met with the media throng on Wednesday afternoon after practice to talk about Thursday night's game against the Pepperdine Waves at the Marriott Center (9 p.m. MST, ESPNU).

The overwhelming theme: Pepperdine (2-1 WCC, 9-5 overall) is better than most people believe, and fully capable of knocking off the red-hot Cougars if they don't play as well as they did last weekend in blowing out Santa Clara and San Francisco.

"Their guards are really athletic," Rose said of the Waves. "They got five guys who play most of the minutes, and they are all long and quick, not only on the defensive end, but the offensive end, their guys…can get to the rim. These guys can do almost everything. They are all good shooters, all good ball handlers. They can pass and then on the defensive end they are really intense and have a really good system.

These post guys, they just play really well in their system together, and he does a great job defensively with them.

We will see how offensively what kind of pace they want to play at, but it will be a real big part of our game plan, to see if we can get the pace at our liking, the way we want to go. But I really like their guards, and Stacy Davis is as good of a scoring post as we have in the league. And this Jett Raines is really improved, too. So, I like their team."

The Cougars are still practicing without Nate Austin (hamstring), but were finally at full strength Wednesday, Rose said, after selected players missed parts or all of Monday and Tuesday's practices with illness or minor injury.

Rose said a flu bug swept through the team over the weekend and earlier this week, but seems to have subsided.

"The three days of practices have been good. We have really been trying to manage some sickness issues, the flu. Today was our best practice, as far as with all of our guys. Monday and Tuesday, we had some guys practice half the time, and then sit out.

We have been managing some minor injuries. It has been good to be home, and have treatment on them. So I hope we go into this game tomorrow night as healthy as we've been in quite a while, and with a good mindset.

This is really a [difficult] weekend, we play this Pepperdine team who really plays us well, and is a really good defensive team, good rebounding team, and then you have a Loyola Marymount team that is brand new to us, because of their coaching staff. There won't be a long time to prepare for them.

Then we have a gymnastics meet on Friday night in between to top things off [which will keep them from practicing in the building]."

Rose said Austin has done a little bit on the practice floor the last two days, but won't play against the Waves or Lions.

"We are still looking at maybe we might see him on the floor next weekend, but I would say that's probably a pretty optimistic date. Hopefully the San Diego game [on Jan. 24] is something that might work for us. We will shoot for that, for now."

Anson Winder is also ailing a bit, but nothing serious. The senior celebrated a birthday on Wednesday.

"He had that [right knee that was bothering him] checked out and looked at, and it is a kind of a bone bruise, right there on the side [of his knee]," Rose said. "It will be sore, but it shouldn't stop him from being able to practice and play. But we have to monitor it. But that was really good news, actually."

More from Rose's press briefing:

On what he can pinpoint as reasons for offense's success last 3 games:

"I think there are two things: One is the pace of how we are playing. Our guys are really on attack, and it shows up in some open shots. But it really shows up on the free-throw line, that we are getting to the line. It shows that our guys are really aggressive offensively and we are taking advantage of opportunities.

The second thing I think is defensive rebounds. We have been really good the last three games where we have been able to control the defensive boards and get out and break. It is quite an advantage when you have your point guard getting seven, eight, nine defensive rebounds.

It allows your pace to go. And Kyle does a really good job deciding when to push it with the dribble, and when to forward it up with the pass. And that's been a key for us.

We showed them three or four plays in the Santa Clara game where Kyle has it and is pushing it and there are three guys around him trying to stop him, and he pushes it up with the pass and immediately you have an advantage because there are three guys around him with the ball and he pushes it up. So we should have four and they have less than four.

Then you have a lot of space, a lot of opportunities to attack and go."

On Corbin Kaufusi's progression:

"I think that Corbin has really progressed in the last three weeks. A lot of it has been because he is healthy. He had the most unbelievable thing happen early in the year when he had an issue with his lung. Then in the Chaminade game in Maui he kind of tweaked his knee, and it was a lot worse as far as pain was concerned than he let on. He tried to practice through it and play through it and he lost a lot of his explosiveness.

Now that he has been healthy for three or four weeks, he is starting to get confident in his ability and that's the biggest part of this thing. Because he is physically good enough to help us in a lot of different ways. And the more practice time he gets, the more game time he gets, the more he learns our system and the more comfortable he feels. And he's just a real physical, strong, athletic post guy who is going to keep on getting better."