KANSAS CITY — Unlike a year ago when Texas Tech ousted BYU at the Big 12 basketball tournament, there wasn’t a lot of despair and anguish in the locker room on Friday night after Houston routed coach Kevin Young’s Cougars 74-54 at T-Mobile Center.
There was more of a sense of resolve, the usual gloom displaced by point guard Dallin Hall’s positivity and resoluteness.
“This isn’t going to knock us off our path in the least bit,” Hall said after No. 17 BYU was manhandled for the second straight time this season by what is arguably the best team in the country.
Houston (29-4) has defeated BYU (24-9) twice by a combined 51 points in 2025.
The red-wearing Cougars are a legitimate threat to win it all this year, although there are some concerns that coach Kelvin Sampson’s team’s physical, rough-and-tumble, clutching, grabbing defensive style could be penalized in the Big Dance.
No question, though, Houston will get a No. 1 seed when the NCAA Tournament bids are handed out Sunday (4 p.m. MDT, CBS) and will be tough to beat, especially if big man J’Wan Roberts returns from a right ankle sprain.
What about BYU?
It remains to be seen what the 20-point loss on national television, in which BYU fell behind 15-0 and didn’t look all that competitive in the first 20 minutes, will do to the Cougars’ seeding.
Most bracket projections have them as a 6 or a 7 seed. A 5 seed isn’t out of the realm of possibility, although BYU is usually under-seeded a bit due to the school’s policy of not playing on Sundays for religious reasons.
Last year, for instance, BYU was the highest-rated 5 seed in the tournament but landed a No. 6 seed. No. 11 seed Duquesne bounced BYU out of the dance in a first-round game in Omaha, Nebraska.
Because of that “No Sunday Play” rule, there are only four sites to which BYU can be sent: Lexington, Kentucky; Denver, Colorado; Wichita, Kansas; and Providence, Rhode Island.
“BYU is going to get a great seed in the NCAA Tournament,” Sampson said, graciously, before Houston met — and beat — Arizona for the Big 12 tournament championship Saturday afternoon.
“They are going to be a tough out for whoever plays them.”
BYU dropped from No. 23 to No. 24 in the NET rankings after the loss, and from No. 23 to No. 24 in KenPom.com. Saturday morning, ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi had BYU as a No. 5 seed, playing Xavier or Boise State in Denver.
“I think Denver would be cool, just because it is closer to home,” Hall said. “It rarely works out how you want, but that would be awesome just because we have fans out there who could go.”
So the setback wasn’t too damaging to BYU’s national profile, but what about its psyche?
“It won’t (nick) us at all,” Hall said. “We have played too well the last little bit, and the chemistry we have built, and the wins that we have got, I think for this it is more of a good learning thing for us going into March Madness. Confidence just really comes from trusting in your work over a long period of time, so that is what we are going to rely on.”
That’s roughly what Young said from the podium Friday night, after lamenting that the Cougars “couldn’t throw it in the ocean to start the game,” an off-shooting performance “that kinda put us in the mud.”
Young reminded reporters of Houston’s greatness, then called the whole ordeal “really a learning experience” and said it will make him a better coach, and his team a better tournament performer, in the long run.
“I have been doing this for a long time, obviously not at this level, but you always learn in the postseason just how much things get turned up,” he said. “I learned two things in that game: One, the urgency that you have to have in postseason play and the level of focus, because everything comes a little harder in the postseason.
“Two, every pass is more contested, every cut gets checked a little harder, every blockout becomes more challenging, so you have to understand that you have to lock in even more than you normally do.”
Junior guard Dawson Baker, one of the few Cougars whose shot didn’t depart him Friday (4 of 9 for 11 points), said the team was “initially bummed out” by its poor showing, but will quickly flush it and look ahead to doing some damage the latter half of March.
“We have to keep the motivation that we had, and it is important for us to keep that going on into next week and focus on the next task at hand,” Baker said.
“We’ve got competitors. Of course we are going to be bummed out by a loss, but (we will) turn it into something good for us, let it motivate us and get back at it.”
Freshman point guard Egor Demin, who had another subpar outing against Houston, said the red-wearing Cougars are “hard to play against” because of their size, physicality and quickness and that there will be better days ahead for BYU.
“It is (about) getting experience. No matter the result of the game, it is experience, anyway, and obviously we are not playing to lose, but to get the experience (is important),” Demin said.
“It happened, and we came back into the locker room and talked about life is not ending. It is a big experience and a big practice for us before NCAA Tournament because at this point everybody (you play) is going to be dialed in 100%.”