PROVO — BYU basketball’s poor stretch has become a free fall.
Baba Miller had 15 points, 12 rebounds and five assists; and Jalen Celestine scored 18 as Cincinnati handed BYU a third straight loss 90-68 in the Bearcats’ regular-season home finale in front of a sold-out crowd of 12,012 fans at Fifth Third Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Jizzle James celebrated his senior night with 18 points, two assists and three steals for the Bearcats, who boosted their NCAA Tournament odds with a third Quad 1 victory.
AJ Dybantsa led BYU (20-10, 8-9 Big 12) with 23 points, six rebounds and six assists; and Robert Wright III supplied 21 points. Aleksej Kostic scored 14 points for the Cougars, his third straight game scoring in double figures and fourth of the season.
That may be the only positive from BYU’s current run of form. It’s significant, though.
“Always believing in myself. Believing in my work,” Kostic said in attributing his recent shooting form. “Just step up into bigger roles since we have lost so many players. Also, use the opportunity that Coach Young is giving me.”
Since a 16-1 start where the then-11th ranked Cougars climbed as high as No. 13 in KenPom and No. 8 in the NET, BYU has spiraled to just 4-9 since.
Sure, there is an obvious ailment of four losses in five games since senior Richie Saunders suffered a season-ending ACL injury in the first minute of an overtime win over Colorado.
The Cougars ranked 37th overall in barttorvik.com’s T-Rank at tipoff, but are playing like the 75th-rated team in the country since Saunders’ injury. That includes the No. 57 adjusted offensive efficiency and 127th adjusted defense, according to barttorvik.com.
Scroll back to Jan. 17 and an 84-71 loss to then-No. 15 Texas Tech, and the Cougars are only marginally better — when factoring in wins over Utah, Baylor, Colorado and Iowa State — at No. 59 overall, according to Torvik. That includes the No. 18 offense and No. 199 defensive efficiency, per the metric.
The Cougars aren’t in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament, with six Quad 1 wins, five more in Quad 2 and an undefeated record in Quads 3 and 4.
But anything beyond that is anybody’s guess.
Which may explain why BYU coach Kevin Young had a simple message to his players after another gut-punching loss: “I believe in the group.”
“It was less than two weeks ago that we beat Iowa State, who is a good basketball team. One of the best teams in the country,” he explained. “I think our confidence is a little bit shook right now as a group. I want our guys to have inner belief in themselves and each other.
“You have to manage the emotional swings in sports,” Young added. “When it is going bad it feels like the world is caving in, but when it feels good you feel like you are on top of the world. That is part of going through the season, especially one filled with adversity like the one we have had this year. I just want our guys to believe in themselves.”
If Tuesday night in the Queen City is an indicator, the NCAA Tournament might be a short stay, too.
Cincinnati connected on 6-of-11 3-pointers to open the game, including three by Celestine as the Bearcats used a 12-0 run just three minutes into the game to take control and never look back.
Celestine had 11 points on 3-of-4 3-point shooting, and the Bearcats — who average 8.7 made threes per game — sunk six 3-pointers in the first half and scored 13 points off 10 turnovers en route to a 43-31 halftime advantage.
Wright had 5 as BYU opened the second half on a 7-3 run to pull within 46-38 in less than two minutes. But the Cougars didn’t make a field goal until Kostic’s layup nearly four minutes later to keep the Bearcats in front.
Moustapha Thiam stretched Cincinnati’s lead as high as 24 with 5:57 remaining, taking advantage of BYU’s small-ball lineup to go up 77-53 on four straight makes in the paint.
Overall, the Bearcats used a 34-30 edge on the interior and a 30-21 advantage from the perimeter against the backsliding Cougars, who got just 10 points from players not named Dybantsa, Wright or Kostic.
BYU closes out the regular season Saturday hosting No. 10 Texas Tech (8:30 p.m. MST, ESPN). Then it’s off to Kansas City for the Big 12 Tournament before ultimately learning their Selection Sunday fate.
“We believe in ourselves,” Dybantsa said. “We beat a really good (team) less than two weeks ago. We can still finish the season strong — make a March run.”
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
