KANSAS CITY — BYU basketball coach Kevin Young freely admits it.
The Cougars have become a much tougher basketball team the past 11 days, for whatever reason.
In other words, the squad that forced 22 turnovers and out-rebounded West Virginia by five boards in Wednesday night’s 68-48 walloping of the Mountaineers doesn’t even resemble the group that fell 79-71 in Morgantown on Feb. 28.
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“Just the toughness that we have found over the last 10 days has really been the difference,” Young said after AJ Dybantsa scored 27 points and Kennard “Moo” Davis added 20 in the Cougars’ Round of 16 win at the Big 12 tournament.
The Cougars (23-10) will need that toughness, and then some, if they hope to stay alive in the tournament after picking up two fairly easy wins as favorites. Young’s battered and bruised crew will take on No. 2 seed Houston (26-5), which is ranked No. 5 in the country, Thursday night at 5 p.m. MDT in an intriguing quarterfinal.
“We took it back to the basics (after the losses to UCF, WVU and Cincinnati) and we just dumbed it down with our defense, got a lot less coachy, and a lot more just ‘do it harder, longer, stronger, faster’ and kept it real simple,” Young said. “And our guys have really taken to that, led by these two (Davis and Dybantsa) tonight.”
Dybantsa, who has scored 67 points in two Big 12 tournament games, the most by a freshman in a two-game stretch in tournament history, said “just staying aggressive” has helped him recover from a couple of subpar outings, by his standards.
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“Last time we were up in West Virginia, I think I was a little passive,” he said. “Then they started … sending me into double teams, and I was kind of rallied up and (committed) turnovers. So me just trying to stay aggressive and keep them on their toes (has worked).”
Houston Cougars head coach Kelvin Sampson looks on during the first half of an NCAA basketball game against BYU at the Marriott Center in Provo on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. | Rio Giancarlo, Deseret News
Enter Houston, the only Big 12 team that BYU has not defeated in the blue Cougars’ three years in the league. Houston is 4-0 in Big 12 games against BYU, including last year’s 86-55 thumping at the Fertita Center and 74-54 crushing in a Big 12 semifinal game here in Kansas City.
Ranked No. 8 on Feb. 7, Houston snuck past BYU 77-66 at the Marriott Center as freshman Kingston Flemings netted 19 points.
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Dybantsa had 28 points in that game on 9-of-14 shooting, but BYU was 16 of 28 from the free-throw line to squander a rare opportunity for a Quad 1A home win.
“They are super aggressive defensively,” Young said. “I thought we played a really good game against them at home. We left money on the table. … It was a really back-and-forth, really tightly contested game.”
Young said he has “great respect” for Houston’s program and coach Kelvin Sampson, who took the Cougars to the Big 12 title and then the national championship game in the NCAA Tournament last year.
“It is pretty remarkable what they have been able to do,” Young said. “I love playing his team because you’ve got to have the toughness that is required, like what we had tonight, because that’s how those guys play.”
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Young said BYU learned a lot from playing Houston in the Big 12 tournament last year. Houston jumped ahead 15-0 to start the game and never trailed as BYU missed its first nine shots and turned the ball over nine times in the first half alone.
“You want to play against the best, and they’ve had a track record (that) we are trying to get to,” Young said. “They have been there for a long time.”
Big 12 Tournament quarterfinal game
BYU (23-10) vs. No. 5 Houston (26-5)
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