Provo » Back on Oct. 15 when the BYU Cougars practiced for the first time, they looked at this week and talked about how they wanted it to mean something in their quest for a fourth-straight Mountain West Conference basketball title.

Well, it does.

"We are right there," coach Dave Rose said after Monday's practice.

The No. 13 Cougars play host to San Diego State on Wednesday and No. 10 New Mexico on Saturday in what is arguably the most important regular-season week of the Rose era.

"This is how it is supposed to be," Rose said. "And this is what we want it to be, so let's just take advantage of that opportunity. We are playing two teams that have had great seasons also, and we are going to have to be at our best."

Not counting student tickets (which are pre-sold as all-sport passes), around 13,500 tickets had been sold by midday Monday for Wednesday's game, so officials are expecting more than 20,000 to be on hand to greet the Aztecs (20-7, 9-4 MWC).

Saturday's game against New Mexico is sold out (22,700).

Obviously, the staff's job early in the week is to make sure the Cougars don't look past San Diego State.

"This is when you really find out a lot about your group, when it gets late in a season and in a championship run, and all the games become so much more important, each individual game," Rose said. "Hopefully they will be able to respond how they have so far this year."

Rankings run

The Cougars are in the college basketball rankings for the eighth straight week (the school record is nine, in 1988), landing at No. 13 in the Associated Press Top 25 and at No. 11 in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll.

New Mexico, which is also 25-3, is No. 10 in the AP poll and No. 12 in the coaches poll.

"We talked to the guys about it," Rose said. "This is exactly where we want to be."

Briefly

BYU guard Jimmer Fredette is the Mountain West Conference Player of the Week for the fifth time this season and seventh time in his career. The only other MWC players to win five weekly awards in the same season were Utah's Luke Nevill and Andrew Bogut and New Mexico's J.R. Giddens . ... Rose said that backup guard Lamont Morgan Jr. , who had his knee scoped almost two weeks ago, could return to practice late next week. ... The Cougars are a No. 4 seed in ESPN's latest Bracketology projections.

drew@sltrib.com