CINCINNATI — Make that 10 wins on the year for BYU.
The Cougars went on the road and earned a hard-fought 26-14 win over Cincinnati Saturday night, moving to 10-1 on the season and getting dangerously close to clinching a Big 12 championship game berth.
3 takeaways
LJ Martin was a superstar. BYU’s bell cow set a new single-game personal best with 266 total yards — 222 rushing, 44 receiving — and two touchdown runs.
Most impressively, he surpassed his previous career-high (162 total yards) before the end of the third quarter.
When the Cougars desperately needed to put the Bearcats away in the fourth quarter, Martin kept churning forward and eventually broke off a 33-yard touchdown to ice the ballgame and sprinkle on some much-needed style points.
Heading into Saturday, many believed Cincinnati’s success against BYU would be determined by the Bearcats’ ability to contain Martin and the Cougars’ rushing attack as a whole.
But Cincinnati couldn’t stop BYU’s ground game.
BYU ran for 265 yards as a team, averaging 5.4 yards across 49 attempts.
Bear Bachmeier ran 13 times for 46 yards, finding the end zone for the 11th time in 2025 to break BYU’s single season quarterback rushing touchdown record.
With such a punishing effort on the ground, BYU dominated the clock battle with more than 38 minutes of possession time.
For the most part, BYU’s defense delivered. Though Cincinnati did put up 387 total yards, the Cougars were largely solid defensively and found ways to impact the game.
BYU forced three Cincinnati turnovers — a Tanner Wall interception, an Isaiah Glasker fumble recovery and a turnover on downs in the red zone — and held the Bearcats to a 4 of 13 mark on third down.
The Cougars’ strong third down defense resulted in three Cincinnati field goal attempts of more than 40 yards, each of which the Bearcats missed.
BYU is closer than ever to earning a trip to the Big 12 championship game. Two weeks from now, we may be seeing the Cougars in Arlington.
With a win over UCF next week in Provo, BYU would clinch the chance to play for a conference title. It would be the Cougars’ first league championship appearance since the WAC days of 1998.
BYU narrowly missed the Big 12 title game a year ago. The Cougars then of course lost their veteran starting quarterback late in the offseason and turned the position over to a true freshman.
What appeared destined to be an uneventful, underwhelming campaign has resulted in one of the most exciting, unpredictable and overall impressive seasons in school history.
Kalani Sitake, his coaching staff and BYU’s veteran leadership deserve major credit for how they’ve handled business this year and defied every possible expectation. It’s been an outstanding collective effort.
But they still need to take care of business next week against UCF.