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Provo • Mostly because of injuries to key players, it has been a season of adjustments for the BYU basketball team. For instance, the team that was supposed to feature the strongest frontline in coach Dave Rose's 12 years at the helm is suddenly utilizing a four-guard lineup in key stretches of games.
The new West Coast Conference scheduling format — which has basically scrapped the traveling-partner system and done away with byes — has also caused the Cougars to somewhat change the way they operate.
So far, so good, however, through the first two weeks of league play.
The Cougars improved to 3-1 in the WCC after Saturday night's easier-than-expected 91-62 romp over Pacific at the Marriott Center, to take the team to 12-5 overall, in what Rose said was essentially "traveling to a home game" because BYU played at Saint Mary's on Thursday night, falling 81-68.
"Our guys handled it pretty well," Rose said. "To play that Thursday night game and then travel to a home game, it just feels a little bit different."
He's not complaining. Rose said WCC coaches urged the league to do away with the pre-Christmas games they instituted last year because it limited their ability to schedule good nonconference opponents that week. For instance, BYU traveled to Illinois before the holiday this season, and went to a tournament in Hawaii last year during the week of Christmas.
"We will just deal with it," Rose said. "That is one thing that I don't spend a lot of time with, because I have no control over it. They just deal it out to you, and you look at it and try to manage it. If I like it or not, I don't think it makes any difference."
For the first five weeks, the Cougars will have a road game and a home game. This week, for instance, they host San Francisco on Thursday and travel to San Diego on Saturday.
In February, they will have double home games two weeks and double road games two weeks, but will have to hop on airplanes between the two road games, jetting between Los Angeles and San Francisco one week and Portland and Spokane the last week of the regular season.
"If you look at the [entire] schedule, that's kind of how everybody is doing it," Rose said.
As far as the biggest on-court adjustment the Cougars have had to make — the season-ending injury suffered by starting power forward Kyle Davis has made lineup rotations more challenging. That evidenced itself Thursday when freshman forward Yoeli Childs picked up his second foul with 15 minutes, 35 seconds remaining in the first half.
Rose turned to 6-foot-5 guard/wing Elijah Bryant and the Cougars went small. BYU worked on a four-guard alignment during the summer and preseason before Bryant suffered his knee injury, but had to rely almost exclusively on the two-post lineup while he recovered.
"I think [Childs] is doing a nice job developing his game on the perimeter, but you get four guards out there and a big post guy [Childs or Eric Mika] it can help you in certain situations," Rose said. "By no means do I think it is going to be the core of what we do. But I think you will see it. It will be good for us."
San Francisco dropped to 1-3 in conference, 11-6 overall, after Saturday's 63-52 home loss to Saint Mary's. The Dons defeated Utah 89-86 in Hawaii last month and led the Gaels 42-40 with 11 minutes left in the game, so they are capable of the upset, Rose cautioned.
"Offensively, they spread you out, shoot threes," he said. "I saw they game they played in Hawaii against Utah when they hit [16] threes. That is enough right there, that you need to know [about] how that is going to be a battle."
Twitter: @drewjay —
San Francisco at BYU
P Thursday, 7 p.m.
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