BYU’s final season in the West Coast Conference has been brutal in many respects. The Cougars saved their worst performance for last.
But BYU’s checkered 12-year membership in the WCC has produced a bunch of memorable games — and many more that have been forgotten.
No, the Cougars didn’t win any regular season championships, and haven’t won a tournament championship, during their time in the WCC. BYU squeezed decades’ worth of impactful games during that span, however.
Naturally, when it comes to compiling a list of the classic moments, the Cougars’ improbable three consecutive victories at national powerhouse Gonzaga, from 2015-17, stand out.
“It’s so hard to win there. Look at the numbers. The numbers are staggering,” former BYU coach Dave Rose, who led the Cougars to each of those triumphs, recalled recently. “You can count on one hand the number of games the Zags have lost in that building. After we won the first one, the second one was, hey, we’ve got a chance. We won that one. The third one was even crazier because we won by eight or nine points.
“It’s one of the highlights of my coaching career, to be able to take a group of guys there — and it was a different group each time — to go in there and be able to do something very few teams are able to do there, to win.”
This exhaustive list of BYU’s most memorable games includes the amazing, the good, the bad and the ugly. And we’ve added some games that deserved honorable mentions.
Greg Wrubell, the Voice of the Cougars, and Deseret News sports writers Dick Harmon and Jay Drew helped compile this list.
1. No. 23 BYU 91, No. 2 Gonzaga 78 (Feb. 22, 2020, Provo)
On senior night in Provo and before a sellout crowd at the Marriott Center, BYU snapped the Zags’ 40-game regular season conference winning streak and 19-game overall winning streak.
It was a signature victory for coach Mark Pope in his first season at the helm and when it was over, the crowd stormed the court, just a few weeks before the NCAA Tournament was canceled due to COVID-19.
“I hope all 18,000 of us in there and everybody that watched on TV got to see something they’ll never forget because it was one of those really special moments in sports and it’s not going to be our last,” Pope said.
Yoeli Childs finished with a game-high 28 points and 10 rebounds, Jake Toolson had 17 points, TJ Haws added 16 and Zac Seljaas chipped in 12.
Wrubell calls this win “the high point of BYU’s best season as a WCC member.”
2. BYU 79, No. 1 Gonzaga 71 (Feb. 25, 2017, Spokane)
Top-ranked and undefeated (29-0) Gonzaga was poised to make history on senior night at The Kennel. Instead, BYU made some history of its own. Listed as 20-point underdogs, the Cougars earned their first, and only, victory over an AP No. 1-ranked opponent and denied Gonzaga’s quest to go unbeaten.
So confident was everyone in Spokane that the local newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, had printed up 6,000 copies of a special edition to toast a 30-0 conclusion of the regular season, intended to be distributed to fans at the end of the game. Instead, the Zags dropped to 29-1.
An imperfect BYU team ruined Gonzaga’s perfect season. The Cougars were already an underdog going into the game, then they fell behind 18-2 to open the game. BYU also rallied from a 12-point deficit in the second half.
Eric Mika scored a game-high 29 points to go along with 11 rebounds. His jumper gave the Cougars their first lead with 8:38 remaining, and another jumper, with 1:05 left, proved to be the game-winner.
After the final buzzer sounded, frustrated and stunned Zags fans chanted “N-I-T!,” “N-I-T!” at BYU as the Cougars celebrated on the court. Weeks later, BYU ended up losing in the first round of the NIT.
3. BYU 73, No. 3 Gonzaga 70 (Feb. 28, 2015, Spokane)
This marked the Cougars’ first win over an AP top-3 team in 34 years (they beat No. 2 UCLA in 1981) and they ended Gonzaga’s 41-game home-court winning streak.
Nobody could have imagined that would be the first of BYU’s three straight victories in The Kennel.
“It was their senior night and it was a packed house. An hour before the game, all the students were there, dressed up as missionaries. … It’s a fun basketball environment,” remembered Tyler Haws, who was a Cougars senior. “I look back at memories of my senior year and that’s definitely at the top. We needed that win. There was a lot riding on that game. We had to make plays down the stretch and guys stepped up. We needed everybody. I missed two free throws down the stretch in that game that haunts me today. We got a stop and freshman Ryan Andrus steps up to the line and knocks down two big free throws. It’s a total team effort to win those games.”
4. Saint Mary’s 70, BYU 69 (Jan. 16, 2013, Provo)
For BYU fans, this one still stings. This game set the tone for the fierce rivalry between the Cougars and the Gaels.
Early during BYU’s second season in the WCC, Tyler Haws’ shot lifted the Cougars a lead with 2.5 seconds remaining.
Saint Mary’s guard Matthew Dellavedova immediately hit a game-winning, half-court buzzer-beater to give the Gaels a one-point victory in front of a stunned Marriott Center crowd.
“Tyler made what we all thought was the winning basket. Two-and-a-half seconds later, Dellavedova let that thing go almost right in front of us,” Rose recalled. “He went right up the right side and let that thing fly. As crazy as this sounds, I thought when it left his hand, it was going in. That never happens. For some reason, in my mind, that night, it was right on line. It looked good from the minute it left his hand. We experienced the highest high and the lowest low all within about five seconds.”
5. BYU 69, No. 25 Gonzaga 68 (Jan. 14, 2016, Spokane)
This was the Cougars’ second of three wins in a row at The Kennel.
BYU guard Kyle Collinsworth scored 18 of his 20 points in the second half as the Cougars overcame a 13-point second half deficit in the upset. Forward Nate Austin blocked a Kyle Wiltjer shot with two seconds remaining to seal the win.
6. BYU 85, Saint Mary’s 72 (March 5, 2018, Las Vegas)
The Cougars had lost five straight games to the Gaels — including a 31-point setback in the WCC tournament the season before — and they picked a good time to end that drought.
In the WCC tournament semifinals, Yoeli Childs scored a then-career-high 33 points, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range, while Elijah Bryant added 25.
That loss helped keep Saint Mary’s out of the NCAA Tournament, despite having won 28 games.
7. BYU 60, Saint Mary’s 57 (Feb. 15, 2014, Moraga)
The Cougars won for the first time at McKeon Pavilion — on the same day that the Gaels retired the No. 4 jersey of Dellavedova, who was playing in the NBA for the Cleveland Cavaliers and was in attendance.
A year earlier, Dellavedova hit his “Dellavedagger” shot to sink BYU.
The Cougars clawed back from a 12-point second-half deficit.
Freshman Eric Mika unwittingly earned a spot in the lore of this rivalry when, in the game’s waning moments, he made a “choke” sign to the student section.
“I was in this small gym and there were these two fans telling me the whole game that I was overrated. I was in foul trouble, so they were doing the choke sign to me,” Mika recalled last month in an interview with BYU “Sports Nation.” “I was a kid. I definitely let the emotions get the best of me in that moment. We had a sweet comeback and I got to hit them with the choke sign. It just had to be on ESPN.”
8. BYU 81, Saint Mary’s 79 (Feb. 1, 2020, Provo)
Like the scene from a movie, Cougars guard TJ Haws knocked down a game-winning 3-pointer with nine seconds left to help deliver an emotional win over the Gaels.
Then Haws went to the hospital to be with his wife, Lauren, who gave birth to the couple’s first child, Tyson, later that night.
“C’mon, man, you can’t make this stuff up. Are you kidding me?” said Childs, who added 19 points on 9 of 12 shooting.
Haws, who had 23 points and five assists, said he was thinking about his son’s impending birth as the ball dropped through the net and the Marriott Center crowd erupted.
9. No. 1 Gonzaga 88, BYU 78 (March 9, 2021, Las Vegas)
In the WCC championship game at Orleans Arena, the Cougars led the unbeaten, top-ranked Zags by 14 points in the first half (scoring 53 points in the first half) and they held the lead for most of the second half.
However, Gonzaga rallied to beat BYU to keep its perfect season alive. That performance helped the Cougars receive a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament.
“I want to give BYU a ton of credit. They really took the fight to us, especially in that first 20 minutes,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said afterwards. “We couldn’t stop them. They had us on roller skates. They were outcompeting us and beating us to balls. They were executing their offense and making big shots. I think they showed themselves to be a heckuva team and a top 25-level team.”
10. BYU 78, Santa Clara 76 (March 7, 2015, Las Vegas)
In the WCC tournament quarterfinals, Tyler Haws hit a game-winning jumper with 2.5 seconds to play to knock out the Broncos. The Cougars ended up losing to No. 7 Gonzaga in the championship game.
11. BYU 72, San Diego 71 (Feb. 15, 2020, San Diego)
TJ Haw’s alley-oop to Childs for a dunk with 11.1 seconds remaining carried the Cougars to a dramatic win at Jenny Craig Pavilion.
12. Portland 114, BYU 110 — 3 OT (Jan. 23, 2014, Portland)
Pilots guard Bobby Sharp, who had been averaging seven points a game, looked like an NBA sharpshooter, nailing eight 3-pointers in a game that lasted 55 minutes. BYU’s Tyler Haws poured in a career-high 48 points in the loss.
13. No. 22 Saint Mary’s 57, BYU 56 (Jan. 28, 2023, Provo)
In the Gaels’ final WCC game in Provo, freshman Aidan Mahaney buried a tough turnaround jumper with 0.3 seconds remaining. The Cougars led 55-53 with 2:17 left, but they couldn’t hang on.
14. No. 8 Gonzaga 75, BYU 74 (Jan. 12, 2023, Provo)
The Zags rallied from a 10-point deficit with five minutes to play and Julian Strawther finished off the Cougars by hitting a 3-pointer with 9.8 seconds remaining in Gonzaga’s final WCC game at the Marriott Center.
15. BYU 83, No. 24 Gonzaga 73 (Feb. 2, 2012, Provo)
In the first meeting between BYU and Gonzaga in a WCC game, the Cougars beat the Zags. It was BYU’s second consecutive win over Gonzaga, having beaten the Zags the previous March in the NCAA tournament.
16. BYU 79, San Francisco 77 — OT (March 10, 2014, Las Vegas)
In a thriller in the WCC tournament semifinals, the Cougars outlasted the Dons to advance to the WCC championship for the first time. But USF coach Rex Walters, who had predicted that his team would win the tournament, was not happy.
“I would say we are the best team in this tournament,” he said after the game. “The best team may not have won tonight. Our hat’s off to BYU. ... There may be a lot of Mormons mad at me, but I don’t give a rat’s you-know-what what the state of Utah thinks of me.”
Later, Walters apologized for his comments.
17. San Francisco 77, BYU 71 (Feb. 21, 2019, Provo)
In the final eight minutes, BYU surrendered a 14-point lead as USF came back to stun the Cougars. Frankie Ferrari scored a team-high 23 points for USF, going 5 of 5 from 3-point range and 9 of 12 from the floor. He also added seven assists and six rebounds in one of coach Dave Rose’s final home games.
18. San Diego 80, BYU 57 (March 9, 2019, Las Vegas)
The No. 7 seeded Toreros scored the first 13 points of the game, led 46-19 at halftime and were up by as many as 44 points midway through the second half and bounced the Cougars out of the tournament in humiliating fashion. BYU hit 1 of 17 from 3-point range. Weeks later, Rose announced his retirement.
19. BYU 75, San Francisco 73 — OT (Feb. 10, 2018, Provo)
The Dons led the Cougars 63-57 with 39 seconds left in regulation and at the free throw line. Elijah Bryant hit a 3-pointer to send it into overtime with four seconds left and the Cougars edged USF in the extra period.
20. BYU 83, Loyola Marymount 82 — OT (Feb. 10, 2022, Los Angeles)
Languishing in a four-game losing streak, BYU rallied from a 17-point second-half deficit to knock off the Lions.
The starting lineup featured four Black players — Fousseyni Traore, Gideon George, Te’Jon Lucas and Seneca Knight — for the first time in school history. Also of note, BYU, which is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also started five players that are not members of the church for the first time in school history. The fifth starter was senior guard Alex Barcello.
Honorable mention (in chronological order):
BYU 81, San Francisco 56 (Jan. 7, 2012, Provo): Brock Zylstra scored 22 points on 8 of 8 shooting from the field and 6 of 6 from 3-point range to lead the Cougars.
BYU 85, San Francisco 84 (Feb. 16, 2012, San Francisco): Matt Carlino scored a career-high 30 points, including 22 in the first half and the game-winner with 18.9 seconds remaining, as the Cougars squeaked past the Dons.
BYU 82, Santa Clara 67 (Feb. 18, 2012, Santa Clara): Noah Hartsock suffered a knee injury midway through the second half, but returned to help the Cougars beat the Broncos. He scored five of the Cougars’ final 13 points to finish with a game-high 21.
BYU 63, Pepperdine 61 (Jan. 31, 2013, Malibu): Carlino drilled a game-winning 3-pointer, while falling down, with 12.1 seconds remaining, and just before the shot clock expired to lift the Cougars, who trailed by double-digits at halftime.
No. 10 Gonzaga 83, BYU 63 (Jan. 24, 2013, Spokane): Zags star Kelly Olynyk recorded a perfect game against the Cougars — 9 of 9 from field, 8 of 8 from the free-throw line.
BYU 73, No. 25 Gonzaga 65 (Feb. 21, 2014, Provo): In the Cougars’ first victory over a ranked team in five chances that season, they snapped a five-game losing streak to the Bulldogs. It marked just the second loss for Gonzaga in conference play in two years.
No. 2 Gonzaga 75, BYU 64 (March 11, 2014, Las Vegas): In the WCC championship game, Cougar star Kyle Collinsworth suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in the second half. BYU not only lost the game, but it lost Collinsworth for the NCAA Tournament the following week.
BYU 87, Loyola Marymount 68 (Feb. 7, 2014, Los Angeles): Collinsworth led the Cougars to victory in a game that saw him record his fifth triple-double, setting a single-season NCAA record. He tied a career-high with 23 points, pulled down 12 rebounds and recorded 10 assists. Collinsworth finished with an NCAA record 12 career triple-doubles.
BYU 82, Portland 69 (Feb. 26, 2015, Portland): Tyler Haws broke BYU’s all-time scoring record — two days before BYU’s first win in Spokane — surpassing Jimmer Fredette. Haws’ layup with 14:39 left in the first half clinched that title. Haws finished with his career with 2,720 career points.
BYU 114, San Francisco 89 (Feb. 11, 2016, San Francisco): Nick Emery tied a school-record by hitting 10 3-pointers and poured in a career-high 37 points, setting the school single-game scoring record by a freshman. Danny Ainge had 36 points in a game as a freshman in 1977-78.
Pacific 77, BYU 72 (Feb. 6, 2016, Provo): Lowly Pacific snapped the Cougars’ 17-game home winning streak, two days after BYU beat Saint Mary’s at home.
BYU 68, San Francisco 52 (Feb. 12, 2017, San Francisco): Freshman Childs enjoyed a breakout game, notching career highs in points (23) and rebounds (17) to go along with three blocks in 39 minutes of action.
San Francisco 83, BYU 82 (Jan. 25, 2020, San Francisco): USF overcame a 14-point second-half deficit, while staging a stunning 21-0 run. Dons guard Khalil Shabazz came off the bench to explode for a career-high 32 points on 10 of 10 shooting from the floor and 6 of 6 from 3-point range.
No. 17 BYU 81, Pepperdine 64 (Feb. 29, 2020, Malibu): Childs poured in a career-high 38 points on 17 of 27 shooting and pulled down 14 rebounds as the Cougars completed the regular season on a nine-game winning streak.
Saint Mary’s 51, No. 14 BYU 50 (March 9, 2020, Las Vegas): The Gaels’ Jordan Ford drilled a spinning, long jumper with 1.4 seconds left to knock off the Cougars in the WCC tournament semifinals. It turned out to be BYU’s final game of the season because the NCAA Tournament was canceled.
No. 1 Gonzaga 86, BYU 69 (Jan. 7, 2021, Spokane): The Zags raced out to a 30-7 lead and cruised to a blowout victory in an empty arena due to pandemic policies. But what made this game memorable was that it was that due to game postponements because of COVID-19 — the Cougars hadn’t played in almost two weeks — officials from both BYU and Gonzaga scrambled to fill the void on short notice, moving the game scheduled on Feb. 6 to Jan. 7. The game was announced on Tuesday and it was played on Thursday.
BYU 62, Saint Mary’s 52 (Jan. 14, 2021, Moraga): The Cougars snapped their six-game losing streak in Moraga by playing superb defense and finishing the game with a shocking 19-2 run.
BYU 95, Portland 67 (Jan. 21, 2021, Provo): With no fans in the Marriott Center due to the pandemic, 7-foot-3 Purdue transfer Matt Haarms scored a BYU career-high 23 points, including a perfect 9 of 9 from the floor and a perfect 4 of 4 from the free-throw line. He also added six rebounds and three blocks. The school record for most field goals made in a game without a miss was set by Cougar legend Kresimir Cosic in 1971, when he went 12 of 12.
BYU 79, San Francisco 73 (Feb. 25, 2021, Provo): Barcello hit a school-record 7 of 7 3-pointers in the first game of the season with some fans allowed at the Marriott Center. He finished with 29 points.
Santa Clara 77, BYU 76 (Jan. 27, 2022, Santa Clara): With less than one minute remaining, the Cougars held a 74-70 lead. But BYU collapsed down the stretch. The Broncos outscored the Cougars 7-2 over the final 42 seconds. Future first-round NBA draft pick Jalen Williams, who finished with a game-high 26 points, scored the game-winner just before the final buzzer. It was the first of a four-game losing streak for BYU.
Pacific 76, BYU 73 (Jan. 29, 2022, Stockton): The Tigers, ranked No. 303 in the NCAA’s NET rankings, beat the No. 28 Cougars. It marked the first time that BYU had lost back-to-back regular-season games in three seasons under Pope.
BYU 75, Pepperdine 59 (Feb. 26, 2022, Malibu): Barcello poured in a career-high 33 points on 10 of 12 shooting from the floor, including 9 of 10 from 3-point range, and 4 of 4 from the free-throw line. And he had zero turnovers.
San Francisco 75, BYU 63 (March 5, 2022, Las Vegas): In a must-win game for two teams fighting to get into the NCAA tournament, USF defeated the Cougars. To add insult to injury, guard Jamaree Bouyea’s unnecessary last-second dunk put an exclamation point on the win, prompting boos from BYU fans in attendance.
