One shot: No. 13 BYU can’t finish monster comeback vs. No. 1 Arizona
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- BYU’s Keba Keita, right, defends Arizona’s Brayden Burries in a Big 12 men’s basketball game at the Marriott Center on Monday, Jan. 27, 2026.
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- BYU forward AJ Dybantsa (3) drives to the basket against Arizona forward Koa Peat (10) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Provo, Utah.
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- BYU guard Richie Saunders, left, and Arizona guard Jaden Bradley, right, go for the ball during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Provo, Utah.
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- Arizona’s Brayden Burries drives to the basket against BYU in a Big 12 men’s basketball game at the Marriott Center on Monday, Jan. 27, 2026.
For much of the BYU-Arizona men’s basketball game on Monday, the No. 1-ranked Wildcats played like, well, the No. 1 team in the country and led comfortably.
Yet, somehow, the Cougars found themselves with the ball, down one with 11.6 seconds to play.
Rob Wright III — suffering through his worst game in a BYU uniform — got the call and penetrated deep into the key only to have his shot swatted away by freshman Brayden Burries, who gathered in the loose ball and was fouled. He hit a pair of free throws with 2.1 seconds left and Wright’s desperation heave was off, preserving Arizona’s 86-83 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 18,209 at the Marriott Center.
Wright, who was just 3 of 16 from the field (1-for-5 from 3) and scored a season-low seven points, couldn’t duplicate his buzzer-beating effort that took down Clemson at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 9.
“I made it a two-option play,” BYU head coach Kevin Young said. “They (Arizona) did a good job of taking the first option away. Rob got the ball within two feet of the basket and I felt pretty good about that. Probably a little bit more time on the clock when they collapsed and maybe we could have found something. But Rob’s a gamer. We saw it at the Garden. I trust him in those moments.”
No. 13 BYU trailed by 13 points at halftime, by 19 midway through the second half and by 10 with a minute to go. But a few calls went their way — including a flagrant foul on Burries, an offensive foul on the Wildcats and a forced jump ball in a crazy sequence — and Keba Keta’s rebound basket with 16 seconds remaining cut the deficit to one point. The Cougars forced the jump ball and that led to the final attempt.
“Just as a whole, we didn’t execute as well as we’d like to, but in that last little bit we executed well,” BYU senior guard Richie Saunders said. “That’s what it came down to. So we’ve got to figure out how to just keep chipping away at making that 40 minutes instead of just good stretches.”
Saunders, who scored 18 points and grabbed nine rebounds, wasn’t on the floor for the final play after fouling out with just under a minute to go. Freshman AJ Dybantsa scored a school freshman record 43 points on Saturday against Utah and had 24 on Monday but was just 6 of 24 from the field.
“I missed shots,” Dybantsa said. “I missed shots I normally make. My three wasn’t falling, wide open 3’s weren’t falling. I just missed shots.”
The early part of the game was a battle, with nine lead changes and six ties. BYU led 26-24 after four points from Dybantsa with 7:05 to play in the first half. But the rest of the half was all Arizona, who outscored the Cougars 20-5 from there. Burries (19 points) and Jalen Bradley (17) were unstoppable, netting 36 of the Wildcats 44 points and outscoring BYU’s entire team. Arizona took a 44-31 lead at the break and the Cougars continued to stumble through most of the second half, falling behind 64-45 with 10:45 remaining.
But BYU started to find the range from the 3-point line and finally got the game under double digits with back-to-back triples from Kennard Davis Jr. and Saunders, 78-71, with under two minutes left. The Cougar crowd leaped to their feet and stayed there the rest of the game, only to watch their team fall just short on their final possession.
The Cougars made 10 of 20 from the 3-point line after halftime, with Davis breaking out of an 0-for-15 slump by making all five attempts in the second half to finish with 17 points.
Burries scored 29, making 13 of 14 from the foul line, and Bradley had 26 points. Arizona (21-0 overall, 8-0 Big 12) made 26 of 32 from the line (compared to 12 of 19 for BYU).
“It felt like everything at the end kind of went against us,” Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd said. “But you know what, our guys have competitive character and hung in there and found a way. But that easily could have went the other way, for sure.”
How much mileage you get out of BYU turning a blowout loss into a close loss against the nation’s No. 1-ranked team may vary. As for Young, he chose to believe the Cougars can play with anyone.
“We’re right there with every team in the country,” he said. “I think it just as much as I did before the game as I do now. We didn’t play well. If you had told me before the game that Rob and AJ were going to go 9 for 40 (from the field) and we were going to lose to the No. 1 team in the country by three points … I’m not here for moral victories. I’m pissed. I wish we would have played better. I wish we would have won the game comfortably.
“So it’s just all about improvement, that’s the bottom line. You’ve got to learn from your mistakes. I just told the players, in conference play — and I think you’re seeing it across the country — the margins are very small. You can’t make mistakes repeatedly, and so when you do, we got ourselves into a hole. We give ourselves credit for digging out of it.”
BYU (17-3, 5-2) gets no respite after the loss and will head to Allen Fieldhouse for a Saturday matchup against No. 14 Kansas.
