MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Much to the chagrin of the 13,000 or so West Virginia basketball fans who were eager to start their postgame celebration and sing John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” as their 79-71 win over No. 19 BYU wound down on Saturday, Cougars coach Kevin Young called a timeout with five seconds remaining to set up one final play.
Any hope of winning at 14,000-seat Hope Coliseum — sponsored by a natural gas and energy company — had already been lost for the backsliding Cougars, but Young wanted to send a message to his team and perhaps prepare for future situations when a last-second shot might be required to get a win.
Alas, freshman guard Aleksej Kostic missed a 3-pointer and WVU’s partying began as if the Mountaineers (8-8, 17-12) had just knocked off an outstanding team. Several West Virginia news outlets called it an “upset” and a “signature win” for first-year coach Ross Hodge.
Where have they been?
Suffice it to say, slumping BYU (8-8, 20-9) is no longer an outstanding team, despite its No. 19 national ranking — that’s sure to evaporate when Monday’s newest rankings are released after back-to-back losses to unranked teams — and six Quad 1 victories.
BYU dropped to No. 23 in the NET rankings and Kenpom.com, and is still viewed as a probable No. 7 seed in this month’s NCAA Tournament, but there are serious issues with Young’s club as it heads into March.
Home wins over Colorado and then-No. 6 Iowa State and a competitive showing at No. 4 Arizona after star wing Richie Saunders sustained a season-ending knee injury gave fans hope that BYU could right itself after the loss of the heart and soul of the squad, but reality set in Saturday night in Morgantown, even as hundreds of Cougar fans gathered near the court to console superstar AJ Dybantsa and his teammates upon their eighth loss in their last 12 games.
In his postgame interview, Young said he was “obviously upset” and “disappointed” with BYU’s first loss to West Virginia since 1947, and called the Cougars’ effort in the first half when they fell behind 40-26 “a joke” and “inexcusable,” especially on defense.
But later the second-year coach acknowledged the gravity of the situation when asked about his message to the team moving forward.
“Throw it all in (the trash can), honestly,” Young said. “February is over with. It has been hard. I will be honest. The whole season has been full of adversity, and I don’t (get) too philosophical very often, but that’s life, man. Crap happens, and you got to friggin’ figure out a way to get through hard stuff, is the bottom line.”
With surging Cincinnati (8-8, 16-13) up next on Tuesday at Fifth Third Arena (7 p.m. MST, ESPN2), the path doesn’t figure to get any easier for BYU. The Bearcats crushed Oklahoma State 91-68 in Cincy on Saturday and have won five of their last six, including an 84-68 walloping of then-No. 8 Kansas at Phog Allen Fieldhouse.
Then the Cougars play host to No. 16 Texas Tech on Saturday in the Marriott Center on Senior Day.
Lose those two games, and BYU is suddenly staring at a No. 10 seed in the Big 12 tournament and a first-round matchup on March 10 in Kansas City, possibly against rival Utah. That after getting a double-bye into the tournament last year as the No. 4 seed.
“Throw it all in (the trash can), honestly. February is over with. It has been hard. I will be honest. The whole season has been full of adversity, and I don’t (get) too philosophical very often, but that’s life, man.”
— BYU coach Kevin Young
There are issues all over the place with this team — most notably lackluster defense and few offensive options outside of AJ Dybantsa and Rob Wright III — but Young insisted Saturday that the Cougars remain united and optimistic that they can turn it around.
“I am proud of our group for staying together,” he said. “It has been challenging, there’s no getting around it.”
Young then mentioned that Saunders’ injury “gets all the headlines,” but that the Cougars have been playing without four other guys — Dawson Baker, Nate Pickens, Xavion Staton and Brody Kozlowski — almost the entire season.
“Three of which (Baker, Pickens and Saunders) would be rotation guys,” Young said. “And so you can either make an excuse about that, or you can throw it in a trash can. … We have still proven that we can play with the best teams, even with the injuries that we had.
“And so we have to galvanize ourselves,” Young continued. “The thing I’m kind of dumbfounded on is, I thought after that big win against Iowa State, we would be able to galvanize ourselves a little more than we have.”
Speaking of overrated, No. 4 Iowa State lost 82-73 to Texas Tech in Ames, Iowa, on Saturday. That certainly takes some of the luster off BYU’s win over the Cyclones last week in Provo, and it is a huge credit to Tech, which has handled the loss of 2025 Big 12 Player of the Year JT Toppin much better than BYU has handled the loss of Saunders, an all-conference player.
Young said the Cougars continue to search for answers and reinvent themselves, but time is running out.
“So that’s my message to the guys, is what they want is still in front of them,” he said. “You know, we obviously have some work to do, but you do kind of have to throw it in a trash can, and at some point you just got to decide, ‘This is who we want to be.’”
Saunders’ absence on the court creates a bit of a leadership void, which Young said Saturday now falls on the shoulders of Dybantsa and Wright, a sophomore who was one of the few bright spots against West Virginia with 23 points and four assists in 40 minutes.
“We definitely miss Richie in that (leadership) space, and these two young men have to step up in that area,” Young said, pointing towards Dybantsa and Wright.
“… That’s part of growing up. It’s part of learning, right? So when you do get to March, you got a body of work that you can rely on. Just more galvanizing of the team and more leadership is what I would love out of these two guys.”
