Hours before Wednesday night's 7 p.m. Cougar Tipoff -- an instrasquad scrimmage at the Marriott Center that is free to the public -- the BYU Cougars have announced their team captains for the 2012-13 men's basketball season.
The captains are seniors Brandon Davies and Brock Zylstra and sophomore returned missionary Tyler Haws.
Haws is perhaps the only surprise pick and is quite likely the first BYU player to be named a basketball captain his first year back from a mission. It shows the team has a lot of respect for the former Lone Peak High star.
"Brandon, Brock and Tyler will provide great leadership for our team," BYU coach Dave Rose said in a school news release. "They lead by example and push the rest of the guys to be better on and off the court. Their work ethic and example will be a motivating force to help us achieve the goals we've set as a team."
I posted video of coach Rose's chat with reporters last night after practice.
If you don't want to watch the entire 5-6 minutes, here's Rose's take on how the team is progressing:
"There are some things we are doing really well. I think offensively we have a pretty good idea of what we are doing.
Defensively, it has taken a bit longer.
One thing about that is we play a lot more zone, so we are trying to ... usually we put our man-to-man [defense] in, and that's our full emphasis. And then we add zone later.
Now we are trying to put two separate defenses in, so that becomes a little more complicated."
