A couple of people asked me over the weekend if this BYU basketball team is legitimate, and worthy of a national ranking (which hasn't come yet) after pounding another hapless West Coast Conference foe on Saturday in the Marriott Center. The Cougars (21-6) crushed woeful Pepperdine 86-48 in front of 19,008 fans.
Hard to tell.
But if the Cougars can shoot a decent percentage from 3-point range, like they did against the Waves (12 of 32), they will be tough to beat anywhere because they've got such a strong pair of inside players in Noah Hartsock and Brandon Davies.
After posting 23 points and 12 rebounds in his second-to-last game in the Marriott Center, senior Charles Abouo said the Cougars are improving, but haven't peaked yet.
"We feel like we are getting better every day, with every practice and every game, and we just got one mindset, and that's to win," Abouo said. "That's the attitude throughout the whole team, even the guys who are not playing, or who are injured. It is one cohesive group, with one mindset, and we just got to keep it rolling.
We have been getting better all season, but this is the time to capitalize on that momentum and keep things going."
I asked coach Dave Rose if his team improved Saturday when the Waves didn't offer much resistance.
"Oh, absolutely. There are a lot of things in that game that we were trying to work on, and do consistently over the course of a game. I thought tonight that we made some real steps forward as far as getting some combinations in our lineup. I think that Charles [Abouo] played at a [better pace]. He wasn't in foul trouble, and so he had a chance to play multiple minutes, back-to-back minutes.
His time has kind of been chopped up the last three, four weeks, and I think it has kind of hurt the flow of his game. Tonight, to be able to leave him out there for big chunks of a time, I thought really helped us."
Perhaps lost in the Cougars' shooting woes from 3-point range (until Saturday) was the fact that they are defending better. Rose's insertion of Anson Winder into the starting lineup has paid dividends on the defensive end.
The Cougars have forced an averaged of 21 turnovers a game in their last four games.

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The polls are out this morning, and BYU is not ranked in either the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll or the Associated Press Top 25 survey.
However, the Cougars received four votes in the AP Poll, as Scott Johnson (No. 21) of the Daily Herald in Everett, Wash., Jon Wilner (No. 24) of the San Jose Mercury News, Scott Reid (No. 22) of the Orange County Register (No. 24) and Mark Smith of the Albuquerque Journal (No. 25) had BYU in their respective top 25s.
The Cougars received no votes at all in the USA Today/ESPN coaches poll; St. Mary's is No. 16 and Gonzaga is No. 24 in that poll.

The Cougars are No. 31 in the latest Sagarin ratings, and also No. 31 in the Ken Pomeroy ratings. They are 47th in CBS Sports' RPI. The website realtimerpi.com has BYU at No. 39.

In Bracketology, ESPN's Joe Lunardi has BYU as a No. 11 seed, playing No. 6 Creighton in Albuquerque in a second-round game.

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A couple more comments from Charles Abouo after BYU's win over Pepperdine:

On coaches talking about how he needed to let let the game come to him more and how he did that vs. the Waves:

"Yeah, he's right. Sometimes over the course of the season, your mind goes different ways. Sometimes it wanders a little bit. The coaching staff talked to me about that. Sometimes, that is how you are supposed to play -- just let the game come to you, be patient, and do what you have been doing for four years. That's just playing hard, doing what we do, shooting the shots we shoot, and you know, being smart on defense and not fouling. That's what I tried to do tonight."

On playing in his second-to-last home game:

"It is kind of weird. I guess it won't feel any different until the game in two weeks. But it really hasn't hit me yet. Maybe in two weeks it will. It has been awesome to play in the Marriott Center and it hasn't sunk in yet that it is just one game [left] yet. But we will make the most of it, and hopefully we will win when it comes up."

On that twisting, desperation bank shot he made:

"I actually threw that up because if I took another step it would have been a travel, so I just throw it up and see what happens. I got lucky and it went in."