BYU basketball: Y. expects challenge when hitting Waves

Just because the BYU Cougars struggled to make shots in Friday's season-opening win over Long Beach State, with the exception of senior forward Lee Cummard, don't expect them to change their offense much in their road-opener tonight at Pepperdine.

Cummard carried the Cougars with a career-high 36 points in their come-from-behind win at the Marriott Center, but the rest of the squad shot an ice-cold 29 percent. In the first half, when BYU fell behind 38-31 at the break, Cummard's teammates only managed to hit 3-of-21 shots.

However, that doesn't mean coach Dave Rose wants his players to quit launching up 3-pointers — where the Cougars, other than Cummard, made only 3-of-19 — or quit going inside to center Chris Miles, who scored six points but missed 8-of-11 foul shots.

Most of the shots BYU took were shots the players can make. But a lot of the misses came too early in a possession, or were rushed and not in rhythm. Clearly BYU's strength this season should be its shooting and offensive execution.

"There are times when we'll push the ball down there and take that first open shot, but not after four or five straight misses," Rose said. "Our shot selection is that we shoot wide-open shots at our pace, not wide-open shots at their pace."

Cummard says the Cougars need to make sure they expend as much energy on the defensive end as they do the offensive end.

"That's when we play well, when we force them to take a rushed shot, we grab the rebound and go, and then everything else is just kind of second nature because we're playing at our pace," Cummard said.

Rose said BYU's post game is every bit as important, if not more so. He's confident that Miles will only improve on his inside moves and become more reliable from the charity stripe.

"I believe a lot on how we play is dependent on our confidence to throw the ball in there to the post, and that's something we're going to have to work through as a group," Rose said.

"We might miss a shot or two, we might miss a free throw or two, but we still need that ball down in there to run our offense and do what we do."

As the Cougars learned Friday, last season's results mean nothing now. The Cougars, after thumping Long Beach State by 44 points a year ago, were tested this time around. They expect the same tonight from Pepperdine, a team the Cougars defeated 86-67 a year ago. But the Waves lead the series 4-3 and have won all three games played in Malibu, Calif.