BYU baseball just ended its regular season with a bang.
The Cougars belted their third walk-off home run of the year — this time off the bat of shortstop Ryder Robinson — to clinch a 5-4 upset victory Saturday afternoon over No. 14-ranked Kansas.
Fresh off the thrilling regular season finale, BYU now heads down to Surprise, Arizona, for the Big 12 tournament, where the Cougars will face Texas Tech in Tuesday’s first round.
BYU’s program took a clear step forward in its third Big 12 campaign, finishing 14-16 against league foes (27-27 overall) after having gone 10-20 within the conference in 2025 and 7-23 in 2024.
The Cougars won four Big 12 series in 2026 — matching their combined total from 2024-25 — to finish in the top 10 of the Big 12 standings for the first time and earn the No. 9 seed in the conference tournament.
While 2025 saw BYU lose seven different games by eight or more runs, the 2026 Cougars proved much more competitive, with nearly half of their Big 12 losses coming by a slim margin of 1-3 runs.
Simply put: BYU was the worst team in the Big 12 in 2024. A year later, the Cougars finished 12th out of 14 teams and made the conference tournament for the first time.
Now, they’re ninth in the standings and will be the higher-seeded squad in their first round tournament matchup. There’s plenty to like about the turnaround effort in Provo.
“Going into the future, you know, I feel like our program is getting better every year,” head coach Trent Pratt said during his postgame radio interview on Saturday. “We see what we need next, we’ve just got to keep adding depth all around.
“But I think things are bright here, and we’re excited to go down to Surprise and make a run at this thing.”
Pitching played a key role in BYU’s improvement, as the Cougars’ collective 2026 earned run average in league play (6.46) was more than two runs better than 2025’s Big 12-worst mark (8.53).
Easton Jones was a top-10 conference pitcher for earned run average (4.55) and opposing batting average (.248), Garrison Sumner ranked sixth league-wide with 64 strikeouts and Nate Gray tied for the Big 12 lead with six wins.
BYU allowed three or fewer runs in eight of 30 (27%) Big 12 games. Conversely, in 60 conference contests between 2024-25, the Cougars only achieved five (8%) such outings.
For the most part, BYU’s offense was unspectacular by Big 12 standards (10th in batting average and 11th in runs), but the Cougars did rank fourth in doubles, tied for fifth in home runs and within the top half of the league in slugging.
Ezra McNaughton won the BYU triple crown by leading the team in average (.342), home runs (14) and runs batted in (48). Easton Jones clubbed 12 homers with 41 RBI, and Robinson put 10 balls over the fence and got on base 42% of the time.
Defensively, the Cougars were solid, committing the fourth-fewest errors in Big 12 play, turning the fourth-most double plays and throwing out the fourth-most would-be base stealers.
BYU is quite familiar with its Tuesday opponent, No. 12-seeded Texas Tech, as the two teams faced off in Lubbock just this past week.
While the Cougars outscored Tech to average eight runs per game, the Red Raiders won two of the three contests to take the series.
But Texas Tech only picked up eight other Big 12 victories outside of BYU, finishing with the Cougars’ same 27-27 overall record but an inferior 10-20 league mark.
The Red Raiders can rake, leading the conference in hits and posting an average 50 points higher than that of BYU, but they also allow nearly nine runs a game on the mound and have surrendered more home runs than any other Big 12 school.
“We know what it’s going to take to go win a game, we’ve just got to go play good baseball,” Pratt said. We need to throw strikes, play catch and put the ball in play. You do those three things, you got a real good chance to win.
“We know (Texas Tech)’s a real good offensive club, and we’ll have them work it out for us on the mound, they have some good arms. We just need to go play good baseball.”
First pitch for the Cougars and Red Raiders will take place Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. MDT. The game can be streamed on ESPN+.
