The NCAA Tournament hopes for the BYU women’s basketball team are in the hands of the selection committee now.
The Cougars’ Big 12 tournament run came to an end Friday afternoon, as No. 9 seed BYU started slow offensively in falling to top seed TCU, 63-46, at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City.
Does BYU have a chance to make the NCAAs despite losing to the No. 10 team in the country Friday and seeing its five-game win streak come to an end?
“My pitch would be if you watch us, I believe we’re an NCAA Tournament team.”
— BYU coach Lee Cummard
That answer will be known March 15, when the 68-team NCAA field is revealed.
After Friday’s game, BYU first-year coach Lee Cummard made his best pitch for his team’s name to be called on Selection Sunday.
“I think we have the most Quad 2 wins in the country prior to this game and a 7-1 record against those teams that are on the bubble. My pitch would be if you watch us, I believe we’re an NCAA Tournament team,” he said.
“We play a style of play, we get up and down, it’s fun to watch. We do some things defensively to kind of turn teams over, and we shoot the 3. Everybody loves the 3.”
In the five games prior to Friday’s contest, BYU finished the regular season with three straight wins against fellow NCAA bubble teams — Utah, Arizona State and Colorado — then beat Houston in the Big 12 tournament’s first round before rallying past the Utes again in the tourney’s second round.
The Cougars went into Friday at No. 54 in the NET rankings and No. 43 in the WAB (wins above bubble) rankings, and they have an 8-4 record against Quad 2 competition.
“We’re a young team that really started clicking late, figured out who we are at the right time, came up against a great team,” Cummard said.
“But at the end of the day, when I watch us play — and there’s several in this (Big 12) tournament that are kind of in the same boat — we’re every bit what an NCAA Tournament team looks like if you watch us play.”
Friday’s game provided BYU (22-11) with an opportunity to make an impression with the NCAA Tournament selection committee and perhaps even lock up an at-large bid with what would have been the Cougars’ first Quad 1 victory of the season.
TCU (28-4) and its shutdown defense didn’t let those kinds of thoughts linger for very long, however, and BYU goes into Selection Sunday with a 0-5 Quad 1 record.
The Horned Frogs quickly got out to an 11-2 lead, thanks to three early 3-pointers from Taylor Bigby. TCU eventually pushed that lead as high as 16 points in the first quarter and held the Cougars to 19.4% shooting in the opening period to take a 24-8 lead into the second.
“She got us off to a fantastic start. Shot the ball really well in that first quarter,” TCU coach Mark Campbell said of Bigby, who finished with 13 points.
“I thought we did a great job driving and kicking and creating, but Tay works on her craft. Our team believes in her.”
The scoring stayed relatively even over the final three quarters, but the damage was done.
“Our group has that ability — I call it an avalanche — to really get cooking, and so our growth is to make sure we stay in attack mode and continue to put pressure on teams that way, but today that was huge," Campbell said.
BYU only shot 27% against a TCU team that entered the day leading the nation in field goal percentage defense, and the Horned Frogs often stymied the Cougars at the hoop, as they finished with nine blocks, including four each from Clara Silva and Kennedy Basham.
Cummard credited the Horned Frogs’ post defense for disrupting BYU’s opportunities to get back into the game. The Cougars made just six of 15 layups in the loss.
“I think we have probably five (shots) that I remember that they either altered that we normally make and they altered or they completely blocked the shot,” Cummard said.
“Some of them were dump-offs on rolls. Some of them were just drives to the basket that we normally (make) — there’s not a 6-7 and that length there. It didn’t allow us to get in a rhythm offensively for some of our players as individuals, but also as a team collectively.”
BYU went into halftime with just 19 points, though the Cougars trimmed their deficit slightly to 13 after holding TCU to eight points in the second quarter.
It left the door open for BYU to try to claw its way back into the contest, like the Cougars had done the day before.
In a second-round matchup with Utah, the Utes used a 17-2 run to go up nine over BYU heading into halftime, but the Cougars outscored their rivals 43-16 in the second half to run away with an 18-point win.
The No. 10-ranked Horned Frogs, though, never let BYU seriously entertain any upset hopes.
The Cougars briefly climbed within nine at 39-30 following a 9-0 run midway through the third quarter, but the Horned Frogs had an answer and eventually increased their lead back to 12 at the end of the period.
TCU pushed the lead as high as 20 in the fourth quarter on its way to earning the blowout win.
The contest featured three All-Big 12 first-teamers in TCU’s Olivia Miles — also the Big 12 Player of the Year and Big 12 Newcomer of the Year — and Marta Suarez, as well as BYU sophomore guard Delaney Gibb.
Though all three had subpar shooting days, they still led their squads.
Miles, who shot 3 of 10 from the floor, finished with a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds while adding six assists and a block, and Suarez (6 of 16 from the field) paced TCU with 17 points and eight rebounds, three steals and two assists.
Gibb was 6 of 22 from the field but managed 17 points, seven rebounds, five assists and a steal in leading the Cougars.
For the next nine days, BYU will have to wait and watch as the NCAA bubble watch plays out and other teams try to play their way into the NCAA Tournament.
Like her coach, Gibb believes the Cougars, despite Friday’s result, are playing their best basketball now and deserve their first shot at the NCAAs since 2022.
“I think the past five games before this one kind of shows what we can be and what we can achieve. I think that teams want to be their best in March, and I think that we showed that,” Gibb said.
“TCU is a top-10 team. They’re a great team, and we beat them in two quarters. We outscored them in two quarters, so I think that shows that we can compete. Obviously every team can tweak little things that they need to improve on. We’re super young, but we can really compete with the top.”
Gibb’s teammate, Brinley Cannon, echoed those sentiments.
“I mean, I just hope that we’ve done what we can do to show that we’re a good team and that we deserve to be in the tournament,” Cannon said. “We’ll see what happens, but we’re hoping for that. We’re just excited and ready to compete.”
