BYU basketball: Women tip off MWC season at UNLV

PROVO — The BYU Cougars are looking to achieve several goals this season now that Mountain West Conference action is rolling around starting tonight against the UNLV Rebels, who are 7-7 heading into conference action. The game is set to begin in Las Vegas at 7 p.m. and will kick-start the MWC season for the Cougars.

The Cougars are 9-3 and won both regular season games against the Rebels last year but fell to them in the 2009 conference tournament.

Not only do the Cougars want to defeat the Rebels at UNLV's Cox Pavilion, they also have far-ranging goals for conference play and think this season just might be a little better for them as far as reaching those goals is concerned.

"For the last couple of years, we haven't achieved our goals. Finally this team's got a little bit of experience. We know what to expect and what it takes to win in conference. We want to win every conference home game and take the conference championship, and we believe we can do it," said point guard Haley Hall, who is looking good after coming back this season from several knee injuries in the past few years.

The Cougars depend on balance in the scoring department, and different players are coming up big for them every game, and coach Jeff Judkins likes things that way.

"I'd rather have a good, balanced team than one player that scores everything. We're more upbeat this year. We believe in ourselves better, and we enjoy an uptempo style," Judkins noted, saying it was a little different than his usual team.

"It's the first time we've run a lot of this stuff, but I think we have a team that can do it. We have a lot of firepower that we haven't had before," he noted.

The Cougars will be looking to Mindy Nielson-Bonham, Coriann Wood, Haley Hall and a host of others to do their scoring, play their solid defense and run the offense. But right now, Judkins believes the team's biggest strength is its defense.

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