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On a day that some thought not so long ago they'd never see, when up was down and down was up, when big was small and small was big, it was 75 degrees in Provo in mid-March and BYU was in the NCAA Tournament.
Barely.
The Cougars got a play-in game against Ole Miss on Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, for the right to play Xavier in Jacksonville, Fla., on Thursday as a part of the West Region. That's right. The Cougars are going east to go west.
A couple of months ago, all of those things would have blown past unlikely straight through to darn-near impossible. And, yet, there they were on Sunday, as true as true gets. So, we're saying the Cougars now have a chance. A chance to move into the main body of the NCAA Tournament, as that unseasonably warm breeze kicked up and kissed the Cougars on the cheek.
Only zealots will say BYU deserved better.
Back-to-back losses in January — one to Saint Mary's and the other to San Diego — appeared to have ended any hopes the Cougars had of playing in a meaningful postseason affair. Another defeat shortly thereafter — to Pepperdine — sealed the fateful deal.
That deal was undone by BYU over the subsequent five weeks — during which it won eight of nine games, the only loss coming at the hands of Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference tournament title game — and confirmed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
It was slotted into the matchup against Ole Miss, with an 11 seed up for the taking, and a subsequent game against sixth-seeded Xavier. If the Cougars find a road through those two opponents, the chance to play third-seeded Baylor, barring an upset, would be their reward.
BYU will take it — and like it.
Ole Miss is 20-12 this season, led by diminutive guard Stefan Moody, who averaged 16 points. The Rebs scored nearly 73 points a game and gave up 67. One of their highlights came in a loss — in overtime to undefeated Kentucky. A quality win came early in its conference season over ranked Arkansas. The downside for Ole Miss is this: It struggled over the stretch run, dropping five of its last eight games — against Arkansas, Georgia, LSU, Vanderbilt and South Carolina.
In contrast, the Cougars rolled late, benefiting from their victory over the same Bulldogs that bit them in the league championship game just 11 days before, when they took out then-third-ranked Gonzaga in its own building, the first visiting opponent to do so in 41 games. That win, one of the Cougars' few quality triumphs all season, edged them into the NCAA Tournament field, prompting hesitant committee members to include them. Without that big win, they would have been bridesmaids, not brides.
The fact that 25-9 BYU has two very watchable star players hurt them not at all.
Tyler Haws, the school's all-time leading scorer and a finalist for the John Wooden Award, and Kyle Collinsworth, who has more triple-doubles than any other college player, having collected six this season alone, helped renovate BYU into its dance-worthy form. A team that scores like the Cougars, who finished second in the country in offense with 83 points a game, had enough flash and panache to make the flipside of that equation — the fact that they ranked 310th in scoring defense — disappear.
On account of BYU's challenges — shortcomings were apparent with this team, and exacerbated by injuries — followed by that nice stretch run, it could be said that this was one of Dave Rose's better coaching jobs.
Still, right up until Sunday, there were holdouts, some on the committee, who believed BYU hadn't done enough to deserve an invitation. With their card punched, at least on the tournament's edge in Dayton, it will be up to the Cougars themselves to refute that notion and validate what they've already done in 2014-15.
GORDON MONSON hosts "The Big Show" with Spence Checketts weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.