Provo » Despite losing Trent Plaisted to the NBA draft a year earlier than expected and his starting guard line to graduation, Brigham Young basketball coach Dave Rose figured he was going to have a pretty good team this year, one that could possibly contend for its third straight Mountain West Conference regular-season title and perhaps make its third straight NCAA Tournament appearance.

Naturally, a loss in the Marriott Center on Saturday night in front of more than 23,000 fans confirmed his hunch. Pushing the No. 6-ranked team in the country (Wake Forest) to the wire will do that, the coach said.

"I think our team continues to get better, which is our biggest focus right now," Rose said. "I don't want to overanalyze [the Wake Forest game]. It was a great game. We will take the good things from it, and take the things that we need to work on, and move on."

While league play began Saturday for the other eight teams in the MWC, the Cougars got maybe their biggest test of the season against the undefeated Demon Deacons. And while they couldn't pull off a big attention-grabbing win as Utah did against Gonzaga or UNLV did against Louisville, the Cougars left the packed building believing they are on track to reach the season's ultimate goal: win an NCAA Tournament game.

"We are getting better each day and learning how to play together," said senior forward Lee Cummard, a Wooden Award candidate and the team's leading scorer with an 18.4 average. "We are also learning how to compete, and how to be successful."

But there are concerns as the Cougars prepare to begin league play on Saturday at Colorado State.

If there has been a negative to BYU's 11-2 start -- the Cougs play host to Division II Western Oregon tonight -- it is that the same old problem that existed last year has surfaced again: the inability to close out games against really good teams.

Sure, the Cougars picked up a huge road win last Tuesday by outplaying Tulsa down the stretch, but they had nationally ranked Arizona State on the ropes on Dec. 20 and couldn't deliver, and they had an eight-point lead against Wake Forest in the second half and let that one slip away, too.

It was much like that, too, in their last two NCAA Tournament losses to Xavier (2007) and Texas A&M (2008).

"I think that once this team, or this program, starts making plays when it counts, is when we will win big games," Cummard said. " I think that was the difference [against Wake] and in the Arizona State game. We didn't make plays down the stretch."

The Cougars are now 50-113 all-time against ranked teams and 0-2 against them this year, after knocking off then-No. 6 Louisville on a neutral floor in Las Vegas last year.

They were tops among schools also receiving votes in last week's USA Today /ESPN coaches' poll (No. 26), but tumbled to a tie for No. 32 on Monday. Their Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) was 38 as of Monday, according to realtimerpi.com, and they have played the 92nd toughest schedule in the country. They are No. 16 in the Sagarin Ratings published by USA Today .

Certainly, the team is riding a high in Provo, attested by Saturday's second-largest crowd in Marriott Center history. Cummard said that doesn't mean BYU is turning into a basketball school, but acknowledged "there's a different feeling around here this year than in past years, in regards to basketball" because of BYU's loss in the Las Vegas Bowl.

"People want us to succeed even more, it seems, to get the football deal out of their minds," he said.

In his MWC teleconference Monday, Rose said that his primary concern now, and perhaps the element that could keep the Cougars from another successful league run, is depth. That manifested itself in the Wake Forest game when center Chris Miles and his backup, Gavin MacGregor, were saddled with foul trouble.

"A lot has happened with our team in [the last two weeks]," he said. "There are some depth issues with our team that I think we really need to address, and hopefully we can get ourselves in a situation where we can play some guys in some spots that they are not used to playing in."

drew@sltrib.com