Before the BYU and Gonzaga men’s basketball teams took the floor for Thursday night’s West Coast Conference battle, I took a few minutes to reminisce.

You see, this is the 12th straight year where I’ve watched the Cougars and Bulldogs battle on this court, so I looked back at all of the columns I’ve written from those contests.

BYU won two of the first three contests when facing Gonzaga at home, but has only won once since (the 91-78 win over the No. 2-ranked Bulldogs in 2020 before the pandemic shutdown).

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about various aspects of the big games.

I regularly talked about the Cougar need for good outside shooting or how to beat good teams like Gonzaga they have to make better decisions.

In 2013, I said after a five-point Bulldog win in Provo that Gonzaga was the program BYU wanted to be.

“It’s about respect, about getting the big wins on the national stage on a regular basis,” I wrote back then. “It’s about being a team that people expect to win a game or two every year at the NCAA tournament.

“Sorry, Cougars.

“Even with all the 25-win seasons, that’s not your squad.

“At least not yet.”

I then went on to say that “the reality is BYU may never be able to field such a consistently impressive basketball team.

“There is no escaping the fact that missions and injuries and the BYU Honor Code will always take its toll on the Cougar basketball team.

“There are only a finite number of elite athletes that see BYU as a viable option and although Gonzaga has its own limitations, they aren’t in the same stratosphere.

“The Zags consistently have talent, size and athleticism on the bench that Cougar fans can only dream of.

“That makes it unlikely that the Cougars will ever be able to hold the same type of national prominence as Gonzaga has already achieved under Mark Few.”

A decade later, I can look back on those words and see that time has proven them to be accurate.

But even though BYU has yet to elevate the program to the lofty stratosphere that the Zags reside in, the Cougars have often pushed their more successful conference rivals to be even better.

One of the things Bulldog players and coaches have always lauded is how great the atmosphere is when the Cougars host Gonzaga.

I’ve talked to students who have camped out for days, often in freezing temperatures.

Although the number of seats has changed, I always loves seeing how the Marriott Center is always full (or nearly full) for the annual showdown.

And now, after a dozen years of this being the biggest home game on the BYU hoops schedule, I can’t help but be a little nostalgic as the rivalry draws to a close — or at least this chapter of it does.

There has been talk about how the Cougars and Zags might schedule non-league games in the future and I hope that if that happens, they play at the Marriott Center and McCarthey Athletic Center in Spokane, Washington, not just at neutral sites.

There has also been some buzz that Gonzaga might join BYU in the Big 12 for men’s basketball, although that hasn’t appeared to be too serious at this point.

So what we have left after Thursday night is one more guaranteed game in Spokane on Feb. 11 and a potential meeting in the West Coast Conference tournament before the two teams go their separate ways.

But even as I bid farewell to the big games against the Bulldogs, I can’t help but wonder what next year will be like at the Marriott Center.

Think about it.

The Big 12 is arguably the best basketball league in the country and all of the teams that will be a part of the conference next year currently have higher net rankings than BYU, which is at No. 89.

Instead of a couple of big games in Provo against Gonzaga and usually Saint Mary’s, every night the Cougars will be hosting an elite-level program. It seems likely that many will be highly ranked, just as the Bulldogs have been for most of the last dozen years.

So while the sun is setting on this particular rivalry matchup, I can’t help but get amped up for the potential of what other big-time battles are on the horizon for BYU hoops.

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