BYU basketball back in the NCAA Tournament for 3rd time in 5 years

PROVO — No coaching change or roster turnover could keep the BYU men's basketball team from its first goal: getting back to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in five seasons.

Led by first-year head coach Kevin Young and the most improved player in the Big 12 in Richie Saunders, the Cougars punched their ticket to the 2025 NCAA Tournament as an at-large selection Sunday afternoon.

BYU (24-9), a top-four finisher in the Big 12 and ranked No. 17 nationally in the final Associated Press poll of the regular season, will face 11th-seeded VCU (28-6) in Denver to open the East region. Thursday's tipoff is scheduled for 2 p.m. MT on TNT.

"I actually think BYU has enough to get to the Elite Eight," CBS broadcaster Seth Davis said during Sunday's selection show.

It won't be easy, though. Not hardly.

The Rams (28-6) won the A-10 regular season and tournament title with after Sunday's 68-63 win over George Mason in the championship game, and are led by former Utah State standout Max Shulga who followed his old coach Ryan Odom to the Commonwealth.

The 6-foot-5, 210-pound guard from Kyiv, Ukraine, averaged 15.1 points and 5.9 rebounds for the Rams, who went 15-3 in A-10 play and boast nonconference wins over Boston College, Miami and Mountain West Tournament champion Colorado State.

The winner will face third-seeded Wisconsin (26-9) and Big Sky champion Montana (25-9).

The SEC received 14 bids into the tournament, surpassing the all-time record of 11 set by the Big East in 2011. That included the No. 1 overall seed in Auburn (28-5), which was joined on the top line by ACC champion Duke (31-3), Big 12 regular-season and tournament title winner Houston (30-4), and SEC tournament champion Florida (30-4).

One year after Mark Pope left for Kentucky and left the Cougars to rebuild their program on the fly, the former 23-11 team is back where it used to be — and perhaps even stronger.

The veteran core of Dallin Hall, Fousseyni Traore, Trevin Knell and Trey Stewart — yes, even the third-string senior point guard whose minutes decreased overall under Young but worked his way back to become a key rotation regular — was joined by five-star freshman Egor Demin, four-star youngster Kanon Catchings, Utah transfer center Keba Keita, and Rutgers graduate transfer and defensive stopper Mawot Mag to finish with a better record than their 2023-24 counterparts.

These Cougars built on last year's 10-8 conference campaign, lost key departures like Big 12 sixth man of the year Jaxson Robinson and four-star freshman Collin Chandler (Kentucky), as well as posts Noah Waterman and Aly Khalifa (Louisville) — among others — and won 14 games in conference play that included a nine-game winning streak before a loss to No. 2 Houston in the Big 12 tournament semifinals.

BYU hadn't beaten four ranked opponents since 1951. The Cougars beat four ranked teams in four weeks, including two against Iowa State at Hilton Coliseum and the T-Mobile Center in downtown Kansas City — ranked No. 10 and No. 12, respectively, at the time.

The very definition of peaking going into March, the page now officially turns toward making a new kind of history: winning in the NCAA Tournament. The Cougars haven't won a tournament game since Noah Hartsock, Brandon Davies, Damarcus Harrison and Charles Abouo led BYU to a 78-72 comeback win over Iona in the First Four in 2012.

Abouo is now a graduate assistant at his alma mater after a decade-long career in Europe and the Middle East. Can the Cougars' run of first-round futility also come to an end?

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