Great basketball teams find ways to win games when they aren't shooting well, especially on their home court. That's what BYU coach Dave Rose said Thursday night after the Cougars were ambushed 82-68 at the Marriott Center by Loyola Marymount -- a team that's better than its 11-8 record.
Obviously, the Cougars couldn't pull off the feat.
"We need to shoot better than that to win. But I still think the nights that you are not shooting [well] you can still find ways to win games. Tonight we didn't do that," Rose said.
Here's my game story from last night with all the gory details for the Cougars, and here's a closer look at the 3-point shooting woes. The Cougars missed 23 3-point attempts -- their most misses from beyond the arc since last year's loss to Florida in the NCAA Tournament.
Yes, the rest of the WCC noticed, probably quite smugly.
Here's an interesting take on that notion from John Blanchette of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, with a quote from Gonzaga coach Mark Few that should make BYU fans feel a little bit better about the upset loss.
"Those other teams are plenty good enough to knock any of us off," Few said, "and when they do, it shouldn't be [considered] a bad loss."

But that's exactly what it will be perceived as in March when the Cougars wait for an NCAA Tournament bid if they don't win the WCC Tournament in Las Vegas. There's no way around it: when you lose to an 11-8 team on your home court, it is a bad loss. Potentially, it is a devastating loss.

Here are all of Rose's comments in his postgame news conference:

Opening:

"Loyola Marymount I thought played a great game against us. I thought that they defended us really well, I thought they contested almost every pass, contested every shot. Defensively, they had a really good game plan, made it really hard for us to get the ball in the post.
When we got it in the post, they didn't bring a second defender, which is something we haven't seen the last two or three games. And they stayed on our shooters and contested shots, made it pretty tough on us.
Our guys fought through it. We got a chance there in the second half where I think we cut it to four, had two stops, had chances to score on both of those possessions and they made big defensive plays.
And then it seemed like every time we got on a little run and needed a stop, they came up with a big shot, a big play. They deserved to win.
Coach Good and his staff did a terrific job, had a great game plan. The guys executed it, and what we will need to do is regroup here and get ready for Saturday.

On BYU going 2-for-25 from 3-point range:

"And we didn't get a lot of good [looks]. We did get some good ones that we just missed. OK? But for the most part they contested every shot and kind of sped us up. We were a little bit impatient as far as trying to maybe stay a little bit longer with trying to get the ball into the post. It was really physical in there, and I think we just looked away too soon, and tried to reverse the ball to the other side.

On Ashley Hamilton playing for Loyola and how that made Drew Viney more difficult to guard:

"I think it put Viney in a spot that was pretty difficult for us to guard, as far as they had him on the perimeter more. We zoned early in the game, and he seemed to find spots in that zone where he could catch it and hit shots. And then the pace of the game [was troubling]. We never really got the pace of the game the way we needed it to [get]. That's all a credit to Loyola Marymount. They did a great job of taking transition baskets away from us and we didn't get second shots as far as rebounding the ball because we missed a lot of baskets and didn't have a lot of offensive rebounds.
That's another way you can kind of overcome a tough shooting night is to offensive rebound the ball. You miss almost 40 shots and you only get nine offensive rebounds, they are doing a good job."

On tightening the rotation a bit at times, then playing subs a lot at other times:

"I think that's kind of what we do, trying to get our big guys some rest before timeouts, give guys another chance. I thought they were really physical, and that we were going to need to use our bench to counteract how physical they play, and keep our guys fresh."

On what this means for the rest of the season:

"We will find out what we got with this team. These have been a couple really good weeks for us, and now we have a setback. We will see how we respond and I think that there is a lot of basketball to be played, and a lot of really good things can happen for this team. But we are going to have to play better than we played tonight."

On LMU's rally in Los Angeles late and whether that carried over:

"I think you have to realize that this is a team that has been kind of scattered themselves with injuries and they have started to find themselves. They had some real success early when they beat UCLA and they beat a ranked team in St. Louis. It is a very good road team, and it has proven to be that. I think their road record is probably better than their home record. And that's their fourth road win in league. They deserved it tonight, they played well."