BYU vs Texas NCAA First Round Prediction
BYU 79, Texas 67: Why the Cougars Will Dance Into the Second Weekend
A Commentary by Terry Tebbs | Utah Sports Ink
Let me get something out of the way right up front. The staff of Utah Sports Ink, and everyone at Mountain & Main Magazine, bleeds Cougar blue. We have never once talked ourselves into a BYU loss before it happens. This bias didn't start with us. In this family, Cougar basketball loyalty goes back to the late 1950s. It runs deep and it runs earned. So fair warning — what follows may be the hopeful rationalizing of people who simply cannot help themselves.
That said — here are the very good reasons BYU beats Texas on Thursday in Portland, and why 79-67 is not a fantasy.
The National Narrative Is Working With Old Information
Before Tramon Mark hit his game-winning jumper with one second left to send Texas past NC State and into BYU's bracket, television analysts Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley — calling the First Four game together in what was genuinely must-see broadcasting — both predicted the winner would handle the Cougars. ESPN's Seth Greenberg agreed. Fox Sports' Michael Cohen went further, calling a Texas win over BYU the tournament's biggest first-round upset. The chorus of national voices dismissing BYU is loud, unified, and confidently wrong about which team they're actually talking about.
Because the BYU that takes the floor Thursday night in Portland is not the team those analysts have been watching.
What Was Is Not What Is — The Defense
The most important development in BYU basketball over the last month has received almost no national attention. Coach Kevin Young has quietly deployed two players — Khadim Mboup and Dominique Diomande — in new and expanded defensive roles, and what they are building together is a defense that has not yet peaked.
Both Mboup and Diomande bring rare length, strength and athleticism to BYU's simplified switching scheme. The Cougars are now switching virtually everything on the perimeter, making controlled penetration extraordinarily difficult for opponents. The genius of this is timing: because the deployment of these two players in these roles is so recent, the system is still being refined with every game. Every possession teaches them something. Every defensive stop builds the communication, trust and instinct that elite switching defenses require.
When analysts cite BYU's season-long defensive numbers, they are describing a team that no longer exists. Dick Harmon of the Deseret News — a man who has covered BYU basketball for four decades — noted that BYU's defensive efficiency has improved nearly 20 places in KenPom over the last four games alone. KenPom itself now gives BYU a 60% chance to win Thursday, projecting a final score of 84-81. These are not the numbers of a broken defense. These are the numbers of a defense still ascending.
If the attitude matches the system — and every indication is that it does — BYU's defense has the profile to be among the best remaining in this tournament. And it will be better on Saturday than it was on Thursday.
What Was Is Not What Is — The Three-Point Shooting
The same argument applies on offense. BYU's three-point shooting has been cited nationally as a critical weakness. The full-season numbers support that concern. The last four games tell a different story.
Let's be specific, because specificity is where narratives go to die.
Kennard Davis is the number that matters most. Before BYU's last four games — after the low point of a blowout loss at Cincinnati — Davis was shooting 29.5% from three on the season. Over the last four games he shot 13-of-30 from deep, a 43.3% clip, and led the entire team in three-point attempts during that stretch. Thirty attempts in four games is not a player being used cautiously. That is a coaching staff that believes in what they're seeing, and a player whose confidence has visibly transformed. His season-high 20 points against West Virginia in the Big 12 tournament was the visual confirmation of something the numbers were already telling us.
Robert Wright III never needed the reframe. He is shooting 42% from three on the season and shot 40% over the last four games. The national conversation about BYU's perimeter shooting was never really about Wright. He is simply, consistently, one of the better shooting guards in the Big 12.
Aleksej Kostic deserves the most nuanced treatment. His four-game aggregate — 6-of-20, 30% — looks discouraging at first glance. But break it down and you see exactly what makes him dangerous. He went cold against Texas Tech and West Virginia. Then he shot 3-of-7 against Kansas State and 3-of-5 against No. 2 seed Houston — the Big 12's most suffocating defense all season long. His two best shooting performances in that stretch came against the two toughest defenses. That is not the profile of a liability. That is the profile of a big-moment shooter who rises to the occasion. Texas ranks 301st in the country defending the three. If there was ever a night for Aleksej Kostic to get hot, Thursday in Portland is it.
The Dybantsa Nobody Is Fully Seeing
Everyone knows about the 25.3 points per game. Everyone knows about the 40-point record-breaking performance against Kansas State that shattered Kevin Durant's Big 12 tournament scoring mark. Everyone knows he is the likely No. 1 pick in June's NBA draft — Dick Vitale said so himself on national television, even while picking BYU to lose.
What the national conversation is missing is the quieter evolution happening in real time. AJ Dybantsa is becoming a point forward. Not just a scorer who occasionally passes, but a genuine orchestrator — a player learning patience, learning to invite the double team, learning to read what the defense gives him and deliver the ball to the right place at the right time.
His vision out of the double team has improved measurably over the last month. His passes to spotting-up shooters are arriving in rhythm, which is precisely why Davis and Kostic are shooting better — they are catching the ball in position to shoot, not scrambling to gather it. This is a feedback loop. Dybantsa makes the right read, the shooters get good looks, the good looks go in, and the shooters' belief in their own proven ability compounds with every make.
And here is the part that should genuinely concern Texas: with his height, strength and athleticism, Dybantsa is still trending upward in this role. He is not a finished product. He is getting better at being a point forward with every game he plays. Thursday is the next game.
The Factors the Analytics Confirm
Vegas has BYU as a 2.5-point favorite. BYU arrived in Portland on Tuesday morning. Texas flew in from Dayton, Ohio after a grinding, adrenaline-soaked battle with NC State that went to the final second. The Longhorns are coming off their third game in recent days. BYU is rested, healthy and hungry.
Texas's 7-foot center Matas Vokietaitis is one of the most foul-prone big men in the country, averaging 5.4 fouls per 40 minutes. If Dybantsa — the best foul-drawing freshman in college basketball — attacks him early and Vokietaitis sits, Texas loses their only real interior anchor. BYU's Keba Keita, back to full health, becomes the most physically imposing presence in the paint.
Texas does not force turnovers. Texas does not defend the three. Texas gets to the free throw line at an elite rate — which is the one genuine threat. The Cougars cannot afford to foul their way through this game.
But BYU is 11-0 this season when holding opponents under 70 points. And the defense that held West Virginia to just 48 points in the Big 12 tournament — a 20-point demolition of a team that had beaten BYU on the road just days earlier — is still getting better.
The Prediction
BYU 79, Texas 67.
Dybantsa goes for 28. Davis hits four threes. Wright runs the game. Mboup and Diomande make life miserable on the perimeter. Vokietaitis picks up three fouls before halftime. The Cougars are more rested, more cohesive, and more dangerous than anyone outside of Provo and Portland currently believes.
Are we biased? Absolutely. Hopelessly, cheerfully, unrepentantly biased.
But we are also right.
— Terry Tebbs | Utah Sports Ink
Research compiled with AI assistance. All sources independently verified by Mountain & Main editorial staff.