It is fall 2011 and BYU's Jimmer era has just ended. Football power Duke has previously announced their independence in football and has found a home for their Olympic sports in... the Mountain West Conference beginning the 2011-12 season.

Now jump forward 8 seasons and we are concluding the 2018-19 basketball season.

BYU has had a little bit of success against powerhouse Duke the past 7 years, winning two of the first three matchups in the Marriott Center, with the only loss of the three against #2 in the nation Duke by 5 points. The next three years Duke and BYU split with BYU winning three straight years in Cameron Indoor Arena and the Dukies winning three straight in the Marriott Center.

BYU has been fairly consistent in conference play, finishing 2nd behind Duke three times in 8 seasons (assuming that we can get the job done tomorrow night against New Mexico in the Marriott Center).

However, there is a growing chorus of fans saying that if we can get Mark Pope to replace Dave Rose, Pope might be able to get us over the top by outrecruiting Krzyzewski.

This is the situation we are in folks. We joined a conference with Duke. Gonzaga has actually outperformed Duke over the past several seasons.

Here is another way to look at it...

If Gonzaga did not exist, we would be trying to sew up our third regular season WCC championship in 8 seasons with a win on Saturday. Our regular season conference finishes would have been 2nd, 1st (tie), 1st (tie), 2nd, 2nd, 2nd and this year 1st (tie). We would have won the WCC Tournament and autobid in 2014, 2015 and 2018 and would be seeded #2 going into this year's tournament.

Would we still be calling for Rose's head with three regular season first place finishes and thee WCC tournament championships in 8 seasons and 2nd place finishes in each of the other five seasons? Would Mark Pope be able to improve on that record?

Greg