BYU’s run in the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament has been a microcosm of what Lee Cummard’s group has been able to achieve in his first season as head coach.
The Cougars (26-11), after three meandering seasons, have made their way back to the postseason.
And while BYU didn’t qualify for the NCAA Tournament — they were one of the first four teams to miss the cut — the Cougars’ run at the WBIT has proven valuable for a young squad that can build off the postseason success.
If BYU beats Columbia in Wednesday’s WBIT championship game (5 p.m. MDT, ESPN2), the Cougars will also bring home a trophy.
Not bad for a “revenge tour,” as sophomore All-Big 12 first-team guard Delaney Gibb coined it after the team’s quarterfinal win.
BYU hasn’t relied primarily on one player through its four-game run in the WBIT, either, even though Gibb is at the top of opponents’ scouting reports.
There has been a bevy of players, most of them underclassmen, who have helped BYU win four straight in the postseason tournament and nine of the past 10 games overall.
“We were watching the NCAA Tournament selection show and we came in after the show and we just kind of (said), ‘Hey, everybody just express right now how they’re feeling.’ And everybody voiced how they were feeling in that moment.” Cummard said after BYU’s win over Stanford to reach the WBIT semifinals.
“We weren’t going to shy away from, ‘Hey, we’re going to deal in reality, okay? We didn’t do enough to make it in that tournament.’ And whether we agree or not, that’s just what it was.”
In the Cougars’ WBIT opening win over Alabama A&M, freshman Sydney Benally set the program freshman assist record and hit four 3-pointers while scoring 18 points.
In a Round 2 victory over Missouri, Gibb passed the 1,000-point career mark and led the Cougars with 29 points, while freshman Olivia Hamlin tossed in 23.
During the WBIT quarterfinals in a win over Stanford, Gibb again led BYU in scoring with 27 points while captaining a key fourth-quarter stretch as the Cougars pulled away. Brinley Cannon added 15 points.
Then on Monday, with Kansas focusing in on Gibb in a WBIT semifinal matchup, Hamlin came up big with 23 points to tie her career high — and hit that point total for the second time in WBIT play — while Benally added two important 3-pointers as part of a 9-0 run in the fourth quarter.
The Cougars held on to win 70-67 to wrap up their spot in the WBIT championship game.
Others, like Kambree Barber and Lara Rohkohl have also had their moments making the critical plays during this stretch, highlighting the importance of team play for a postseason run.
One of the best parts to all this? A majority of BYU’s key rotational players return, if they don’t transfer out.
“I think we just had a lot of momentum going in,” Hamlin said after the win over Kansas. “I think when we have the momentum and energy on our side, it just makes us have all this confidence in ourselves, and then that’s when we start hitting shots, and then we just have fun out there. When we have fun out there, it’s pretty fun.”
If BYU beats Columbia, it will be the Cougars’ first national postseason tournament championship in program history.
The Cougars already made history by reaching a national postseason tournament’s Final Four for the first time.
Can the “revenge tour” end with one more win? Wednesday, the Cougars will find out.
“We have a chance to go out and prove (the doubters) right or we can go out and prove people wrong. Whether you want to say we’re proving people wrong or a revenge tour, I just love to compete and I think the group has, too,” Cummard said.
How Columbia advanced to the WBIT championship
The Lions (24-8) are enjoying unprecedented success under ninth-year head coach Megan Griffith.
Columbia made the NCAA Tournament each of the past two seasons under Griffith. It’s the first time in the program’s existence that the Lions have appeared in the NCAAs.
Though Columbia fell short of making the NCAA Tournament for a third straight season, the Lions have rolled through the WBIT competition.
In the WBIT, Columbia, which earned a No. 4 seed, has:
- Beaten St. John’s 74-26 in the first round
- Beaten No. 1 seed North Dakota State 86-57 in the second round
- Beaten No. 3 seed California 74-68 in the quarterfinals
- Beaten No. 3 seed Wisconsin 67-50 in the semifinals
The wins over the Bison and Golden Bears came on the road as well. Despite this, Columbia has won by an average of 25.0 points in its four-game WBIT run.
Behind Ivy League Player of the Year Riley Weiss, the Lions have won 23 or more games for the fifth straight season and would tie the school record for single-season wins with a victory over BYU.
Weiss powers the Lions, averaging 20.1 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game. She is top 30 nationally with 91 made 3-pointers this season.
Prior to competing in the WBIT, the Lions had lost two straight, both to Harvard. The first was a loss in the regular-season finale, then Columbia lost to Harvard in the Ivy League tournament.
Columbia beat the Ivy League’s NCAA Tournament representative, Princeton, twice during the regular season.
In the wins over California and Wisconsin, two power conference schools, the Lions jumped out to a first-half lead before earning the win.
Against the Badgers, Weiss scored 21 points and made three 3-pointers in pacing Columbia.
Wing Perri Page, the Lions’ other player averaging double-figures, scored 24 points in the win at California.
“There’s no secret when I got hired with our athletic director who’s here — hired me 10 years ago — I told him I wanted to have a top-25 program and I wanted to be one of the best teams in the country, and I think we’re there,” Griffith said after Monday’s win over the Badgers.
“I think we’ve gotten there over the last five years. I think we still have some work to do. Obviously all of the teams here want to be playing in the NCAA Tournament, but, hey, we reset and we’re in a new season, and we want to go win this thing on Wednesday.”
A brief history of WBIT champions
It’s a small sample size, but in the previous two years of the WBIT’s existence, the champion has gone on to make the NCAA Tournament the following season.
The runner-up, meanwhile, hasn’t made the NCAAs either time.
In the inaugural 2024 WBIT, Illinois beat Villanova 71-57 in the championship game.
The next season, the Fighting Illini earned a No. 8 seed in the NCAAs and beat Creighton in the first round before losing to Texas in the second round.
In the 2025 WBIT, Minnesota beat Belmont 75-64 in the championship game.
This year, the Golden Gophers earned a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament and hosted first and second round games. Minnesota advanced all the way to the Sweet Sixteen before losing to UCLA.