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Provo • Kalani Sitake and Dave Rose are two coaches darn near everybody likes, and not just because they win more than they lose. They are good mentors and affable men at different stages of their careers. And that difference is a part of what separates them.

Having wrapped up his first year at BYU, winning nine games and losing four, Sitake has Cougar fans not just fired up about the football program, he has them connected to the single thing that captures them and their interest the most — belief in a bright future. It's a future that has its limitations because of the confines of independence in which the team operates. But, in spite of that, Sitake has breathed new life into BYU football, stretching imaginations regarding how far he can take his teams, regarding how he might be able to recruit better players, inspiring them to break through the non-P5 boundaries and reach for something beyond what's happened in the recent past, something more remarkable, more meaningful.

His predecessor, Bronco Mendenhall, had lost that. With Mendenhall, there was winning, but there was no top end, nothing extraordinary. The Cougars basically won games they should have won and lost games they could have won, the ones that spark big hope for whatever comes next.

Rose has become Bronco, then, without the weirdness.

He wins a lot — now with an all-time record at BYU of 294-104. He's guided his teams to eight NCAA Tournaments, where they've compiled a record of 4-8. Rose's teams won four Mountain West Conference regular-season championships from 2005 to 2011, and since joining the West Coast Conference before the 2011-12 season have won no championships. At no time during his tenure at BYU has Rose won a league tournament title.

The halcyon days came during the latter Jimmer Fredette years, when the Cougars won a combined 62 games and lost 11, all as imaginations soared. The other seasons have ended with records within a few wins and losses of each other. The last four years, in reverse order, have gone 26-11, 25-10, 23-12, 24-12.

Which is to say, you could throw a hat over them.

There is no abject losing. There is no huge thrill. There is no title. There is only 24-12 and borderline consideration for the NCAA Tournament.

The records and results are a reflection of the athletes Rose recruits and the way his teams play.

Recruiting basketball players to BYU is no smooth ride. There's been some nice tradition there, some spikes — Danny Ainge and Fredette among them — along the way, and a palace of a venue in the re-configured Marriott Center. The school's strict honor code is an ever-present factor. As is the conference in which they play. When football went independent and the basketball team was stowed away in a league made up mostly of small, religious-based institutions that play in tiny arenas, it was thought BYU would dominate. Gonzaga was the lone big dog standing in the way.

Gonzaga has, indeed, stood in the way, along with Saint Mary's. But the Cougars haven't exactly bullied the rest. They win, but then, they don't win the league's ultimate prize. And so it goes … and goes … and goes.

Rose pulls in athletes, many of them steady, few of them spectacular.

Even in cases where BYU is in line for an exceptional player — the Cougars had Frank Jackson, an LDS kid from Utah County, right? — it loses him if he blossoms into something bigger than the norm.

Meanwhile, Rose runs his team the way he always has — emphasizing free-flowing offense and not much else. The team periodically works on defense. It just doesn't play it. Rose's practices are loose and his players in games often turbo-jack the notion of free flowing into … undisciplined. They take bad shots and play soft at the other end. Sometimes, it seems as though the players run the asylum.

And it works … to a point.

Coming into this season — the Cougars were 11-5 headed into their game at the Marriott Center against a mediocre Pacific team on Saturday night — it looked like BYU might have a collection of better-than-the-routine players. Five of their guys were well-known national recruits. Question was, what could Rose do with them?

Well …

One of those players, center Eric Mika, is noticeably ascending to his potential. He's averaging 21 points, nine rebounds, and against Saint Mary's on Thursday night, Mika went for 28 and 10. The rest of the crew has suffered wild undulations, sometimes peaking, sometimes plumbing the depths, depending on the night.

The Cougars got beat on their home floor by Utah Valley, a crushing defeat for a team that thought much more highly of itself. BYU allowed the Wolverines to score 114 points and shoot 53 percent, 49 percent from three. Other losses — Valparaiso, USC, Illinois, and Saint Mary's.

BYU, same as it ever was, will play out this season and finish it with a winning record. The Cougars will score a lot of points. They'll get up and down the floor. They'll hit some sweet shots. And at the other end, they'll scramble and dive at the feet of open shooters, hoping those shots miss. They may or may not qualify for the NCAA Tournament. And it's good, always good, familiarly good, like watching an old re-run of "I Dream of Jeanie" on some late-night network.

But they're unlikely to grab anyone's attention, stretch anyone's imagination, make anyone believe that something extraordinary might be happening here. The only way that could transpire is if they change — if they share the ball, take smarter shots, make them, put up a stronger effort on defense, and, in the future, get better athletes. Lone Peak High against the rest of the college game is … limited.

If Sitake shows up at BYU basketball games, as he sometimes does, he'll get cheers, he'll win the crowd, he'll promise the future. Rose will get cheers, too, on the good nights. On the others, and at the end, the crowd will watch and will leave, almost certain that whatever it was they just saw, they'd seen it before.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on the Zone Sports Network, 97.5 FM and 1280 AM. Twitter: @GordonMonson.