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The 2014-15 BYU basketball team went 25-10, tied for second place in the West Coast Conference, upset No. 2/3 Gonzaga on its home floor, lost badly to the Zags in the WCC tournament championship game and made it to the NCAA Tournament for the eighth time in nine years, where it lost 94-90 in the first round to Ole Miss.

Successful season?

Just OK?

Mildly disappointing?

Complete failure?

I put that question to coach Dave Rose on Monday in our sit-down interview at his window-less office in the Marriott Center.

"There are kind of two things that go through my mind regarding that," Rose said. "One is the anticipation and expectation of the first of the year, going into the season with what we thought would be an experienced and deep roster, and then when we got to Christmas we would add another guy [Jamal Aytes] that could really help us, and what the results of that group would be.

"And then when we got into the middle of it, we realized that there were some challenges that we didn't expect From that point of view, I think our ability to win big games and qualify for the NCAA Tournament can be seen as a success.

The fact that we didn't advance in the tournament, that will sit with these guys pretty hard over the summer and hopefully be a really good motivation to work hard and come back next year and be able to have a better year.

But I do believe that the challenges that this group was faced with in the middle of the year, they responded really well to that."

Rose said it was a difficult ending, partly because the Cougars blew a big halftime lead, and partly because stars Tyler Haws and Kyle Collinsworth deserved better (although it appears that Collinsworth will return for his senior year and get another chance at returning to the Sweet 16, like he did his freshman season).

"Expectations are really high within this program," Rose said. "Our guys walked out of that locker room in Dayton really disappointed that they didn't advance, because that's what we believed we had the talent to do."

Haws' departure will leave a big hole, especially on the offensive end. You don't just find another 22-point scorer. Rose said he will look to freshmen Nick Emery and Zac Seljaas to pick up some of the scoring slack and for Collinsworth and senior Chase Fischer to score a little more. He also said USU transfer Kyle Davis and sophomore Jake Toolson have the ability to score a lot of points.

He will look to establish some chemistry and find Haws' scoring replacement during a trip to Spain in August. The team for that trip will likely be around 10 players, so some guys will be left at home — perhaps guys who are trying to recuperate from injuries such as Jamal Aytes and Nate Austin.

I asked Rose what his program needs to do to take the next step and move into the top 25 consistently.

"I think the most important thing is that once you get to the NCAA Tournament, that you can advance in that tournament," he said. "We played a great first half, kind of the exact opposite of the last time we went to Dayton. We played a great second half against Iona. I guess the moral of that story is that it is better to play a really good second half than a really good first half. It is kind of like in golf, guys always tell you that a good shot and then a bad shot is not as good as a bad shot and then a good shot. If that second shot is good, then you have a chance to score well on the hole. That was our situation. In the second half, we knew we were going to get challenged, with the talent that Ole Miss had. We turned the ball over two or three times, and that turned them on, and then it was hard to turn them off."