BYU basketball: Y.'s Rose battling cancer

PROVO — The BYU basketball program and the college basketball community has been rocked by the news that head coach Dave Rose has been diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer.

Rose, 51, underwent emergency surgery at a Las Vegas hospital early this month to stop internal bleeding. At that time, his spleen and a portion of his pancreas were removed. On Wednesday, the Rose family announced through a press release issued by BYU that lab results from the surgery indicate that he has tested positive for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor cancer — which is different and more treatable than the more common pancreatic cancer adenocarcinomas.

"We've all been touched by this," said former BYU coach and close friend Steve Cleveland, now head coach at Fresno State. "When I saw the press release today it was like a fist in the gut. It just took my breath away."

Last weekend, Rose returned home from Las Vegas to undergo more testing at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. The Rose family will soon meet with doctors to determine a course of action for treatment, according to BYU officials. Rose is currently recuperating at home. It is unknown yet whether he'll be able to coach the Cougars this season or not.

"He has a strong will and is a very positive man," Cleveland said. "I just have a strong belief that he'll do everything he can to beat this disease and do everything that he's asked to do. He's a fighter. He's never been a guy to back down from a battle, and that's how he'll approach this."

"He'll pull himself up by the bootstraps and battle," said Lone Peak High coach Quincy Lewis, a close friend and former player at Dixie State College.

"I've seen him go through a lot of different things, and even though he might look laid back and easy going on the outside, he's got some toughness."

While pancreatic cancer is one of the most serious types of the disease — the National Cancer institute estimates that this year there will be 42,470 new cases of pancreatic cancer in the United States and 35,240 will die in 2009 from it — Rose has a rare form of this type of cancer.

"The most important prognostic factor is whether or not the tumor can be removed surgically," according to the Johns Hopkins medical Web site. "Other significant prognostic for patients with an islet cell tumor/pancreatic endocrine neoplasm include the size of the tumor, the presence or absence of blood vessel invasion, the presence or absence of metastases to lymph nodes or other organs. The five-year survival rate ranges between 50 and 70 percent in most series."