And as far as the BYU women’s basketball team is concerned, the difference from last year’s team to this year’s is relatively stark, but also exciting.

Each member of this year’s Cougar basketball team was presented to the media recently, and unlike last year at this time, more than several players on the roster are known commodities who together helped forge a 2025-2026 season that exceeded just about everyone’s expectations. Those expectations are necessarily raised this season with the Cougars armed with a lot of good returning experience that will be operating under the now familiar regimen of second-year coach Lee Cummard.

First to the podium was, of course, Delaney Gibb, who ripped the nets for the second time in as many seasons as a sophomore and averaged a team-leading 18.3 points per game while raising her numbers substantially in assists handed out and in steals. All of it makes her easily one of the team’s most experienced players and the unquestioned focal point of team in general.

“I don’t feel like I am like an upperclassman. I feel like I’m still a freshman,” Gibb said despite her given status. “I feel like the past years have just flown by. But it’s something that I’ve really tried to focus on. I’m not a super vocal leader naturally, but over years I’ve had coaches kind of harp on that and try and get it out of me. But I think just the fact that I’ve been here for a couple years really does help, because I am comfortable.”

And perhaps even more importantly, Gibb’s teammates are comfortable with her and how she manages the floor.

Joining Gibb on the podium was sophomore Olivia Hamlin, who added considerably to the team’s success last season and is ready and willing to follow Gibb’s lead again entering this year while noting her obvious abilities.

“She’s just an offensively gifted player, and she’s someone that just finds ways to score. She’s someone who’s very athletic and fast and is just a competitor,” Hamlin said. “And so I think going into this season, it’s going to be really easy for her to continue and build off what she did.”

Gibb, who is originally from Alberta, Canada, spent a large portion of the summer playing with Team Canada in the FIBA Women’s Olympic pre-qualifying tournament in Mexico. Gibb was a standout for the Canucks, and helped lead her team to a first-place finish over host nation Mexico and the other six teams participating in the event.

“It’s honestly always amazing to play for Team Canada,” Gibb said. ” … You just get an overload of basketball experience and knowledge, and it’s really unique and so special. I think that it really prepares me to come back to BYU because I get to have a different perspective on things, and I get to look at my game in different ways and different things that I can work on and then bring back to BYU and to our team.”

As far as the specific things Gibb has been working on this summer, a lot of it has involved working to improve her play on one side of the court while expanding her role as the team’s primary scorer.

“I think my freshman year and my sophomore years, I was different both years, but scoring was a main offensive focus, and I want to evolve into someone who’s a playmaker and who is going to find my teammates and give them opportunities to really be successful,” Gibb said. “Then on the defensive end, I worked really hard for the national team on just really focusing on being a competitor on defense and someone that they can really rely on (defensively.)”

As mentioned Gibb will employ those improvements with a group of players she’s much more familiar than last season when Cummard took on a team loaded with freshmen, many of whom saw a lot of playing time, including Hamlin and primary point guard Sydney Benally, It was for that reason that expectations were set relatively low by the media and others entering the season, although the team still managed a 26-12 overall record and 9-9 mark in Big 12 Conference play, all of which put them on the brink of an at-large NCAA tournament bid.

The goal this season is to gain that NCAA tournament bid , and considering the improvements Gibb is expected to make while presenting her superior play with a much more experienced and familiar, that goal is certainly achievable. And although the Cougars acquitted themselves nicely in the postseason in reaching the final game of the WBIT Tournament, Gibb and her teammates aren’t wishing to make a repeat appearance.

“I think that’s something that we have thought about since it happened, and I don’t think that there’s a single girl on our team that hasn’t had that in the back of our minds,” said Gibb about the disappointment of not making the NCAA tournament last season. “And so it’s super motivating, but it also it brings me excitement just knowing that every single girl has that same focus and that goal. I think when the entire team has the same focus, that’s when you can be really successful, and that’s when you can really buy in as a team … I think that throughout practices we’ve seen it in every single practice.”