As BYU men’s basketball visits Gonzaga for the last time, can Cougars finally get a road win in the Kennel?

Provo • The BYU men’s basketball team has never beaten the Gonzaga Bulldogs at the Kennel in Spokane, Wash., in the Mark Pope era. You have to go back to the 2016-17 season, when Dave Rose helmed the program, to find the last Cougars victory on Gonzaga’s home floor.

If they could pull off a last hurrah that would become an instant part of BYU lore.

The Cougars were just one buzzer-beating 3-pointer from upsetting the Bulldogs last month in a game they led by 10 down the stretch.

“We proved that we can play with them,” guard Spencer Johnson said Tuesday. “So we’re just looking forward to going up there and running it back in and see what we can throw at him.

Gonzaga is now No. 16 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll. But it’s not that number that is going to matter when BYU faces the Bulldogs on Saturday.

The Cougars did an excellent job against Gonzaga last month in one key area that has befuddled them for the entire season: outside shooting. They made 13 of 25 3-pointers, a 52% clip. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that the game in January took place in the comforts of the Marriott Center, sure. But they also created a ton of open shots, which is replicable.

Where BYU struggled against Gonzaga the first time around was in turnovers and rebounds. The Cougars gave the ball away 17 times, and they got killed on the glass. Most notably, they gave up 17 offensive rebounds that game, which is uncharacteristic.

And even with all that went wrong, the Cougars still held a double-digit lead with about five minutes remaining.

In the last two games, the Cougars have limited their turnovers to fewer than 10 and gotten back to elite status with rebounding. If they can put it all together in Spokane, it would almost certainly mark the biggest win of not only Pope’s career, but perhaps in BYU history considering the type of season it has had to this point.

After the Cougars snapped a three-game losing streak by beating Loyola Marymount earlier this month, Johnson talked about how good it was to get a win against a good team that had won four straight games. He said winning “kind of rights the ship.” He also said beating the Lions helped reassure the Cougars that can, in fact, “play with everybody.”

But Gonzaga isn’t just anybody, and it may even be a step or two above “everybody” in the metaphorical sense. The Cougars know that, and know what beating the Bulldogs on their home floor would mean.