Enter Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem now for your shot at $50K<\/a><\/p>\nVokietaitis had 23 points and 16 rebounds and took advantage of BYU\u2019s lack of size even though he struggled at the free-throw line.<\/p>\n
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Despite its lack of scoring outside of Dybantsa and Robert Wright III, BYU was still able to cut the lead to four inside of the final two minutes. But Jordan Pope\u2019s 3-pointer with 1:29 to go significantly dampened BYU\u2019s chances of a comeback.<\/p>\n
BYU cut it to four again after a 3-pointer by Aleksej Kostic, but Dybantsa turned the ball over as BYU had a chance to cut the lead even further.<\/p>\n
The Cougars were just 4-of-22 from behind the 3-point line and sorely missed guard Richie Saunders. The senior guard suffered a season-ending knee injury in February. Before the injury, Saunders was averaging 18 points per game and shooting 38% from behind the arc.<\/p>\n
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With Saunders out, Dybantsa and Wright (18.2 points per game) were left to shoulder an even bigger load. The two players had combined to take half of BYU\u2019s shots per game and no other player on the roster averaged more than 8.5 points per game.<\/p>\n
Thursday night, Dybantsa was 11-of-25 from the field and just 1-of-7 from behind the arc. He hit all 12 of his free throws to become the first freshman since Steph Curry in 2007 to score 30 points in his first NCAA tournament game.<\/p>\n
But hardly anyone else outside of Wright took a shot. Wright had 14 points on 17 field goal attempts and Kostic took seven 3-pointers. Three other players combined to take the rest of BYU\u2019s seven shots.<\/p>\n
Texas had four players in double figures. Tramon Mark had 19 two days after hitting the game-winner against NC State, while Dailyn Swain had 14 and Pope scored 11.<\/p>\n
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Dybantsa averaged over 25 points per game<\/p>\n
Dybantsa got a massive NIL offer to commit to BYU as the No. 1 prospect in the high school class of 2025. As Darryn Peterson went to Kansas and Cameron Boozer went to Duke, Dybantsa, who had played at Utah Prep after growing up in Massachusetts, decided to stay in the state.<\/p>\n
However, BYU\u2019s season failed to live up to expectations, even if Dybantsa firmly put himself in the conversation along with Peterson and Boozer to be the top pick in the 2026 draft.<\/p>\n
After making the Sweet 16 as a No. 6 seed a season ago, BYU entered the season as the No. 8 team in the preseason AP Top 25. However, things went sideways once conference play began. After starting the season 16-1, BYU lost five of six games. And that was while Saunders was healthy.<\/p>\n
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The team finished 9-9 in Big 12 play as Dybantsa took even more of a scoring and creating load with Saunders sidelined. After the guard was injured on Feb. 14, Dybantsa took at least 20 shots in seven of BYU\u2019s last nine games and didn\u2019t have a game with fewer than 15 field goal attempts.<\/p>\n
BYU went 4-5 in those games. Even though they had the best player on the floor, the Cougars learned the hard way that depth is imperative for sustained success. And if and when Dybantsa leaves for the NBA later this spring, it\u2019s a formula that BYU will need to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is AJ Dybantsa\u2019s college career over? The star BYU freshman did what he\u2019s done all season long, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14862,17321,14864,9197,41452,14860,39519,305,20931,53325,83218,27435,27,29,28,3111],"class_list":["post-212507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-aj-dybantsa","tag-byu","tag-cameron-boozer","tag-cougars","tag-dailyn-swain","tag-darryn-peterson","tag-jordan-pope","tag-kansas","tag-points-per-game","tag-richie-saunders","tag-robert-wright-iii","tag-steph-curry","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-the-cougars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}