When the lights go on in the Marriott Center beginning fall 2011, the BYU men’s basketball team will be inviting some new competition from the West Coast Conference.
With a seating capacity of 22,700, the Marriott Center can nearly hold the entire enrollment of WCC schools Gonzaga, Portland, St. Mary’s and San Diego.
The likelihood of most of those WCC schools defeating the Cougars seems small. In the past three years, BYU has a 6-0 record against WCC schools, outscoring them by an average of 23.6 points per game.
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“I remember the atmosphere wasn’t like a UNLV-San Diego State matchup,” said Chris Collinsworth, a BYU forward who played against WCC teams in 2007. “That very well could have been because that was a preseason game.”
Collinsworth participated in wins over Portland, Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount before serving an LDS mission in Australia. He said what impressed him was the warm welcome the Cougars received on the road.
“When we played Portland, we had more fans at that game than they did,” Collinsworth said. “It was kind of like a home game in Portland’s gym.”
Despite the warm reception, not all road games in the WCC will be as inviting. Visitors to Gonzaga’s McCarthey Athletic Center, aka “The Kennel,” have virtually found it impossible to win there, managing just a 4-75 record since 2004.
Successful programs like Gonzaga could pose tough matchups for the Cougars. Gonzaga has provided eight of the last 10 WCC players of the year while winning at least 20 games in 16 of the last 17 years.
The Cougars may end up facing one of those top players, sophomore forward Elias Harris, who was the 2010 WCC Newcomer of the Year.
Collinsworth said he also looks forward to the new challenge.
“We’re going to have a target on our chest and so there are going to be some tough games,” he said.
Other programs in the WCC have also discovered recent success. For the first time since 1989, four WCC teams advanced to postseason play last year. Gonzaga and St. Mary’s played in the NCAA tournament, while Loyola Marymount and Portland played in the Collegeinsider.com Tournament (CIT).
While Gonzaga has consistently dominated WCC conference play with 10 straight WCC championships, St. Mary’s had a landmark year, capped with a Sweet 16 berth in the NCAA tournament after beating then-No. 9 Villanova.
Fans of these teams say they are excited to face the Cougars. Jeff Ludlow, a law student at Gonzaga University, said he recognized the hype.
“I noticed it on the front page of the campus newspaper,” Ludlow said. “The community is aware and obviously excited because it was a positive article.”
