Plaisted delivers full practice Thursday

Trent Plaisted got 9 points and 9 rebounds in 19 minutes the other night on a few strands of pasta and some Gatorade.

Since Sunday, Plasited couldn’t keep any food in his body. He had trainer Robert Ramos pitch him some anti-nausea medication and had IVs to keep from getting dehydrated. But it was pasta and gator juice the other night.

The guy’s had four days of flu and a month of a head cold. He hasn’t been well since the Cougars played Michigan State in the EnergySolutions Arena back in December.

But on Thursday, he practiced and put in a full afternoon on the court.

“He’s on the mend,” said coach Dave Rose. “Just the fact he got in that game and competed, gave him something he could take into practice today.”

Gotta hand it to Rose. He’s found a way to help BYU in these league road trips that Frank Arnold, Ladell Anderson, Roger Reid and Steve Cleveland never had.

He charters flights.

Rose is picking his tickets, but he has been arranging for a charter flight to make it to some of these games, reducing the down time in airport lines, delays on commercial flights and time away from home, the class room and the Marriott Center locker rooms. He did it before the AFA game and he’ll be doing it on Friday as the Cougars travel to Laramie.

On Friday, Rose will practice in Provo then put his team on a charter flight while the coaches will save some money by following the team on a commercial airline. The idea is to get the players to the hotel in Laramie as fast as possible and as late in the day as he could squeeze in.

It appears to work, it did against AFA, where the Cougars looked very fresh, shooting a whopping 62 percent from the field in the second half of the 16-point win over the Falcons in Clune Arena.