ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Lynden Rose can feel it when he talks to his nephew, and can see it with his own eyes when BYU's basketball team is on television.

Brothers by last name, and their appreciation of family, Lynden can tell there's a lot Dave Rose has adapted from his Cougar playing days to his Cougar coaching days.

"Dave is tenacious, intense, but he's also caring," Lynden said of his former University of Houston teammate, where they were part of those Cougars' glorious times in the early 1980s. "To be a coach, you have to have a sense of family. Dave's always had that. And his teams play the way we used to play -- they want to run, play tough defense and score a lot."

Lynden, a prominent Houston lawyer, has kept in touch with his former teammate over the years. They're good enough friends that the son of Lynden's sister, Archie, now plays at BYU. The bond is solid enough that Lynden hasn't held it against his old pal in the least that Archie rarely plays.

"You can't complain with a guy who's winning," Lynden said.

That, the Cougars are. In Rose's three seasons, BYU has made every one worth at least 20 wins. This year's 27-7 mark is one of the best ones in school history.

As a No. 8 seed, the Cougars will play No. 9 Texas A&M in the NCAA Tournament today at Honda Center (5:25 p.m. MT, CBS).

Rose has already elevated to the program to a point not seen in two decades. NCAA Tournament bids are an expectation, and it has proven the past two seasons that it's possible to be the higher seed.

BYU has won two consecutive outright Mountain West Conference titles, meaning the program is begging to take that next step -- where it is judged solely on the excellence and failure of late March.

It's an area Dave Rose has known well.

Lynden, who graduated a year prior, remembers Rose vividly: Good shooter, most knee bruises of anyone on the team.

"He's very real, very intense and he works very hard," said former BYU player Austin Ainge of his coach. "He makes you realize there's no big secret to it. That kind of gave me hope. It's not genius, just hard work."

Rose once hoped to get the head coaching job at Houston. It was open in 2004. To go back in history would be futile, but there's a better chance BYU's third-year head coach would have left Provo for his alma mater had a couple of things happened.

First, Lynden Rose is on the UH Board of Regents. He accepted the position shortly after Tom Penders was hired to revive the program in 2004. While UH clearly wanted someone with a broad Division-I track record to head the program, a description Penders fit, Lynden Rose thought his old teammate would have a shot if there were more voices like his speaking up for him.

"He was on my radar," Lynden says.

Dave Rose probably could've been a hotter commodity that spring, if BYU -- on which he was the top assistant -- advanced past the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Gerry McNamara of Syracuse destroyed those dreams singlehandedly with torrid shooting.

The story goes that Penders had a friendship with legendary UH coach Guy Lewis from afar. They met when Penders was a high school coach who took his team to Madison Square Garden in 1971 to see the Cougars play.

Rose played for Lewis on the fabled 1983 team that should have won the national championship, if not for a fluke last-second basket by North Carolina State off an airball.

Lewis, who turned 86 years old Wednesday, told the Daily Herald that he was not asked for advice about Penders, Rose or any other candidate four years ago.

"But I care about David," Lewis said from his home in Houston. "He's quite a guy."

Rose was an older-than-usual college player his senior year, after serving an LDS mission and sitting out the 1982 season with a knee injury.

Ainge said Rose wouldn't bring up the good ol' days but occasionally. They would pop into conversation particularly when the topic was The Pit, the University of New Mexico arena where UH lost the championship game 25 years ago.

More than anything, Ainge recalls a favorite Rose expression: "Keep fighting."

Rose got some of that spirit from his old coach.

He clearly cares about Lewis. Even when BYU lost in the first round of the NIT in 2006 at Houston, Rose made sure to pop up to the "H" Association room at Hofheinz Pavilion to hug and say goodbye to the Lewis family. It was fun for them to see Rose, wife Cheryl and daughter Chanell, who was a baby when Rose was finishing up at UH.

"All class," Lewis said, "that's what he is. He was a really good shooter, a heck of a competitor. Evidently David still is."

A lot of it stems from 1981, losing in the first round of the tournament and clamoring for another shot. That's where the Cougars find themselves today, trying to break a string of five consecutive NCAA losses that dates to 1993, including last year's two-point loss to Xavier.

"I do remember the time between our first loss in the tournament (at UH) and the opportunity to play again," Rose said. "About how I just wanted another opportunity to see how we would do."