‘A microcosm of our season’: BYU’s first-round loss to Texas in the NCAAs looked eerily familiar

PORTLAND, Ore. — Of all the interesting stats that emerged out of BYU’s ultimately disappointing 2025-26 college basketball season, a season that ended Thursday night with a discouraging 79-71 upset loss to the Texas Longhorns in an NCAA Tournament first-round game, perhaps the most telling was the difference in halves.

BYU outscored its opponents by just 15 overall points in first halves and by 265 overall points in second halves.

“We faced a lot of challenges this year, just like we did in this game. We battled back. That’s the mantra of this group. They never quit.”

—  BYU coach Kevin Young

“We were a big second-half team, for whatever reason,” said senior center Keba Keita.

And they were a mediocre first-half team, at best.

The disturbing trend that haunted the Cougars (23-12) almost all season continued at Moda Center in front of a largely pro-BYU crowd, as sleep-deprived Texas took a 46-37 halftime lead and increased it to 68-51 before BYU woke up and made a game of it down the stretch.

The Cougars outscored the Longhorns 34-33 in the second half, but it clearly wasn’t enough.

“I thought our guys fought their tails off in the second half,” said second-year coach Kevin Young. “In a lot of ways it was a microcosm of our season. We faced a lot of challenges this year, just like we did in this game. We battled back. That’s the mantra of this group. They never quit.”

Unfortunately, they rarely got off to great starts, either.

From the opening tip, Texas seemed to have more energy, at both ends of the floor. Oregon State transfer Jordan Pope got wide open and drained a 3-pointer on UT’s first possession. Then AJ Dybantsa, who finished with a game-high 35 points, committed the first of five turnovers. Texas took a 5-0 lead on a rebound dunk by Camden Heide and then an 8-2 lead on a triple by Tramon Mark, and the tone had been set for the rest of the half.

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“I feel like we were settling a lot, and we were playing soft, and we weren’t really, like, cutting hard, crashing the glass, none of that,” Keita said.

The 6-foot-8 senior from Mali included himself in that critique, while responding to a question about why the Cougars didn’t meet expectations this season. The year began with chatter about becoming the first BYU team to make it to Final Four.

Instead, BYU’s dubious distinction of most NCAA Tournament appearances in the country without making it to the Final Four was extended to 33.

This team was supposed to be better than last year’s, with the additions of Dybantsa, Baylor’s Rob Wright, Kennard Davis Jr. of Southern Illinois and a couple of other transfers such as Idaho’s Tyler Mrus and Washington’s Dominique Diomande, who simply did not pan out. UC Riverside transfer Nate Pickens, who underwent surgery before the season began, was never able to show what he could do; returning sixth man Dawson Baker suffered a season-ending ACL injury against Miami in a Thanksgiving tournament in Florida.

“Compared to last year, where we had a mindset of going after it, we didn’t do that in the first half,” Keita said. “The second half, we did a decent job. They just made big shots, and we didn’t. So that was really the difference. And No. 8, in the first half, really killed us.”

That would be 7-footer Matas Vokietaitis, who had a double-double — 15 points and 11 rebounds — in the first half and finished with 23 and 16.

On a night when Dybantsa finished his freshman season with the third-most points, 894, for a freshman in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history, it was somehow fitting that he got very little help, while Texas’ stat sheet was filled with balance.

Dybantsa and fellow freshman Aleksej Kostic combined to go 3 of 14 from 3-point range, while Davis was 1 of 3 and Rob Wright was 0 of 4 from deep.

“If I could replay it, I would have hoped that I could have made more shots, but that’s how it is. Sometimes they fall, sometimes they don’t,” Kostic said. “But I think I gave everything I had and I can go to sleep with a clear mind. … It sucks to lose, but that’s just how it is. They played harder than us today.”

Friday, Dybantsa was named one of 10 semifinalists for the 2026 Naismith Trophy Men’s College Player of the Year, the Atlanta Tipoff Club announced.

Davis, who played 38 minutes and 50 seconds, said the coaches emphasized rebounding and getting off to a fast start, and the Cougars did neither.

“I feel like we came out a little slow,” he said. “They out-rebounded us, obviously. It was really hard to box out their big guy.”

Asked if he will be returning to BYU next year for his final season of college eligibility, Davis responded affirmatively.

“Oh yeah, for sure,” he said.

As for Kostic, who saw his minutes go way up after Richie Saunders suffered his season-ending injury on Feb. 14, the Austrian said he wants to return to BYU.

“I haven’t really thought about anything about next season,” he said. “I was super locked in on this season. So we will see, but I hope so, for sure, yeah.”

Wright told the Deseret News in Kansas City that if he does not enter the NBA draft, he will return to BYU for his third season of college basketball. He reiterated that on Thursday, and Young said the goal as he and his staff constructs the roster for next season will be to surround Wright with shooters.

“I am reminded (that) there’s no substitute for shot-making, end of story,” Young said. “We were 4 of 22 from 3. … How this season impacts what we do (moving forward); I think for sure just shooting is always for me something that there’s no substitute for.”