At least that’s the hope of Cougar players and coaches who took the postgame podium ready and excited to argue their case despite taking it on the chin to the Horned Frogs. Prior to Friday’s loss BYU put forth a 5-game winning streak which showcased the program’s young and exciting roster which Cougar coach Lee Cummard believes deserves is worthy of an NCAA Tournament bid.

“If you watch us I believe we’re a we’re a NCAA tournament team,” he said. “We play a style of play where we get up and down that’s fun to watch. We do some things defensively to turn teams over and we shoot the three. Everybody loves the three and we’re a young team that that really started clicking late.”

Unfortunately the Horned Frogs are at a level where things that click can suddenly not function properly, and the Cougars found that out just after the ball was tipped on Friday.

TCU blitzed the Cougars throughout the first quarter and came away with a 24-8 lead that very much put Cummard’s teams squarely on its heels.

“It’s tremendous team we we came up against and we started a little bit slow and ultimately that kind of was the difference at the end,” Cummard said.

Indeed BYU did manage to outscore TCU in both the second and third quarters by 11-8 and 14-13 margins, respectively, but chipping away just that much proved not nearly enough to take the win. But as BYU guard Delaney Gibb pointed out, the fact the Cougars proved capable of outscoring a team the caliber of the Horned Frogs shouldn’t go unnoticed.

“The past five games before this one show what we can be and how we can achieve,” Gibb said. “I think teams want to be the best in March, and I think we showed that. TCU is a great team and we beat them in two quarters. So I think that shows that we can compete … We’re super young, but we can compete with top teams.”

As for Gibb, she couldn’t find the range early, and struggled to a 1-9 start from the field before finding her groove over the final three quarters to ultimately finish with a team-high 17 points. Bolanle Yussuf came off the bench to add eight points and Sydney Benally scored seven.

Overall the Cougars struggled tremendously from the field and hit on just 27 percent of their field goal attempts and 18 percent from 3-point range. Cummard was quick to credit TCU for a lot of his team’s offensive woes.

“I can remember that they either altered that we normally make and they altered or they completely blocked the shot,” he said. “Some of them were dump offs on on rolls and some of them were just drives to the basket that we normally make (when) there’s not a 6-foot-7 player in that lane. It didn’t allow us to kind of get in a rhythm offensively for some of our players as individuals, but also as a team collectively. We had we had quite a few empty possessions due to some of their defense and they’re a tremendous defensive team.”

With the loss BYU finishes off the season with a 22-11 overall record and 9-9 mark in Big 12 Conference play, all of which Cummard and his players believe is good enough to receive an invite to the NCAA Tournament, although it’s now completely out of their hans. But regardless if that invite is proffered or not, players are optimistic about the team’s future.

“Losing sucks, and obviously we wanted a different result,” said BYU guard Brinley Canon. “But I’m just grateful for this group that we have and we’re just optimistic for the future and the games that we have to finish off this season.”