....I think the majority of BYU fans thought we'd walk in and own the WCC right from the get-go despite successful programs like St Mary's or Gonzaga. I think we respected them as quality program and teams that would pose the biggest challenge but thought we'd watch them battle for 2nd and 3rd, not the other way around. Tip of the hat to the rest of the conference. I think it's been humbling to be the team fighting for 2nd every year.

As for the gym size, it really doesn't matter like you pointed out. Gonzaga has a smaller gym (6500 or so) but has as much of a home court advantage (or more) as BYU and even though BYU fans flock to road games, winning on the road in the WCC has not been a cake walk.

A small bone to pick, however, on the comment that BYU is the only fanbase that it seems to matter to (this is why I said wrong but almost right), Ute fans that are actually in reality BYU haters make a big deal about it as well. Those are the only fans I am particularly familiar with so I can't say for certain if there are others but I'd have to imagine that kind of smack talk isn't central to Utah basketball fans only, there are 49 other states so it's highly likely there are others.

The WCC has been a vexing conference for sure. On paper it doesn't seem like it is as good as the MWC was when we left. At the time UNLV, New Mexico, San Diego St and BYU were pretty regular fixtures rotating in the top 25 and was pretty regularly a multi-bid league. For the most part we saw the WCC as a one horse town (Gonzaga) and even with Gonzaga it had been a while since they had made some noise either in the rankings or in the NCAA tourney. What we didn't expect was that it would be so difficult to consistently win during conference play as it had been in the MWC. The style of play is very different from the MWC and we've sort of been in a holding pattern for a couple of years waiting for some prized recruits to get home from missions and finally hit the court. During our first several seasons in the WCC we've either been a team that had really good bigs (Noah Hartsock and Brandon Davies) but terrible guards (Brock Zylstra, Craig Cusick, etc) or we've had great guard play (Tyler Haws, Kyle Collinsworth and Chase Fisher) and terrible bigs (Josh Sharp, Luke Worthington, etc) but in all of those seasons we've always had terrible depth at all positions.

This season will be the first in the Dave Rose era where we're stacked at every position (okay, a little thin at the big 3) and have both high quality talent and a lot of it (6 players on this roster were ESPN top 100 players coming out of high school). We might not have the big name transfers a program like Gonzaga has but we've gotten some quality transfers that have added some key depth at the point/combo guard position (something we've always lacked).

With this group of players BYU finally has the talent they need to win the WCC although it might be a year away. I think the one thing that might hold us back is that our coach isn't much of a chess player when it comes to late game situations in close games. His style of play (up-tempo, shots fired early in the shot clock) doesn't value possessions down the stretch and BYU doesn't have a good track record in tight games, especially when trailing with a couple minutes left. When opposing teams tighten their D and challenge everything, we still aren't afraid to chuck it up from where ever. Our inefficiency on offense has hurt us and our lack of regard to playing tight D has hurt as well down the stretch (can't get stops).

Hopefully this season we're not in the same old spot (3rd place battling for 2nd).