Dave Rose, who has been at BYU since 1997 and the Cougars’ head coach for the last 14 seasons, announced his retirement on Tuesday.
“I always tell everybody — you can’t trick how you feel,” Rose said in a press conference at the Marriott Center. “You can pretend, you can ignore it, but you know inside how you feel. And my coaching soul said it was time, time to be done.”
Rose was 301-133 during his tenure at the helm, not including 47 vacated wins from the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons. He is a cancer survivor, treated for pancreatic cancer back in 2009.
His tenure at BYU will perhaps best be remembered by the tenure of National POY Jimmer Fredette, who helped lead the Cougars to the 2011 Sweet Sixteen.
Looking ahead for BYU, the leading candidate should be Utah Valley head coach Mark Pope, a former BYU assistant under Rose. Pope is 77-56 in four seasons at UVU, appearing in three straight CBIs with a program that a junior college as recently as 2003.
Other names that will be considered include Portland State‘s Barret Peery, LA Lakers assistant and former Stanford star Mark Madsen, and current Utah assistant DeMarlo Slocum.
credit Scott G Winterton for the photo
