Not much has changed in MPSF play for No. 7 BYU during the past few seasons, usually hovering around the upper echelon of the league’s standings but still not quite able to reach the top in four years.
“The last few years we’ve had the NCAA champion in our conference,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead told the Deseret News this week. “I played and I coached a handful of these teams that were winning the conference championship and so right now we got to figure out a way to scratch and claw and get ourselves in a position where we can do that.”
After a promising start to the season that saw the Provo school climb to a top-five national ranking and even receive a first-place vote, it has struggled to prove itself. Since then, the Cougars have gone 0-6 against teams currently ranked ahead of them, again leaving questions as to whether they are a true contender for an MPSF regular-season title this year.
“We’ve been too inconsistent,” Olmstead said when assessing his team’s performance this season. “We’ve seen this team compete and play at a very, very high level. And then we’ve seen this team … not be able to maximize who they are and those have been the … hard moments.”
Those challenging moments have continued to follow the Cougars recently. The last time BYU was chosen in preseason polling to finish atop the MPSF was 2021 — a year that saw the school win the league en route to becoming the runner-up to the national championship.
In the three completed seasons that followed that year, BYU’s best MPSF finish was second place in 2023 and its worst was tied for last in 2022. The Cougars again have their work cut out for them this season, facing five nationally ranked league foes.
BYU’s lone MPSF matches against an unranked league opponent came versus Concordia in February. The Cougars won both matches, beginning 2-0 in MPSF play.
“It’s nice to start conference play with a couple good wins on the road,” Olmstead said following his teams’ wins over the Golden Eagles.
Still, great challenges remain ahead for BYU to find success in a league it used to control but can’t seem to throttle anymore.
Despite being picked overall to complete the 2025 campaign in third place, the Cougars were the only school besides UCLA to receive a first-place vote in this year’s MPSF preseason coaches poll. It marked the second year in a row that BYU was tabbed to end the season in third, meeting those exact expectations by the end of the regular season in 2024.
The Cougars find themselves in a similar position at the midway point of MPSF play this year, tied for fourth place in the newly expanded league that now includes nine teams with the additions of Vanguard and Menlo (two schools left off BYU’s schedule). After splitting a pair of matches with No. 13 Grand Canyon last weekend, the victory snapping a streak of six straight losses to the Antelopes, BYU stands at 3-3 in MPSF contests.
Prior to its matches against Grand Canyon, the Cougars played a pair of contests against unranked Harvard, getting a nice reset from the grind of MPSF play.
“I think they’re good, I think they’re really valuable,” Olmstead said of the matches against Harvard that gave his team a chance to regroup after two losses to No. 3 USC. “It’s nice to be able to … sort of build the guys’ confidence and feel good about that.”
BYU freshman middle blocker Niko Hales felt similarly following the Cougars’ first of two wins over the Crimson.
“I think this is a great game for us to fix some things with our offense, to get better, to improve as a team,” he said. “Then conference play will start up again, and we’re really excited for that too.”
BYU will get another important break this week, with a bye, before league matches resume. Then the Cougars will face No. 12 Stanford, No. 2 UCLA, and No. 9 Pepperdine to round out the season. Both UCLA and Pepperdine enter the week unbeaten in MPSF contests, giving BYU tough tests ahead as it seeks to find a path to the top of the league.
