No. 19 BYU will complete its two-game home stand on Tuesday, February 24, by hosting UCF at the Marriott Center. The game is set to begin at 9 p.m. Mountain Time and will be broadcast on ESPN2 with Mike Monaco and Miles Simon providing commentary.
This meeting marks the fifth time the Cougars and Knights have faced each other, with BYU holding a 4-0 record in previous contests. UCF head coach Johnny Dawkins has yet to secure a win against BYU, standing at 0-6 all-time during his tenures at both Stanford and UCF.
In their last encounter during the 2024-25 season, BYU overcame a halftime deficit to defeat UCF 81-75 in Orlando. Richie Saunders led the Cougars with 22 points, making eight of his fourteen field goal attempts and six of nine from three-point range. Mawot Mag contributed 19 points and five assists as BYU finished the game shooting 14-of-32 from beyond the arc.
On Saturday evening, No. 23 BYU achieved a notable victory over No. 6 Iowa State with a score of 79-69 before an audience of over eighteen thousand fans at the Marriott Center. This was their second win over a ranked opponent this season and their first home victory against a top-ten team since 2020.
Head coach Kevin Young improved his record against Iowa State to three wins without a loss, including two victories when Iowa State was ranked in the AP Top Ten. Under Young’s leadership, BYU has now won twenty-eight out of twenty-nine games when shooting fifty percent or better from the field.
Freshman AJ Dybantsa led all scorers with twenty-nine points while also collecting ten rebounds and nine assists—just one assist shy of his second career triple-double. Dybantsa also played a key defensive role by limiting Iowa State’s leading scorer Milan Momcilovic to five points on one-of-five shooting.
Kennard Davis Jr., who recently found consistency in scoring double figures, added seventeen points for BYU against Iowa State, making three shots from long distance. Mihailo Boskovic recorded a career-high thirteen points in just his third career start.
Davis Jr.’s recent performances mark an improvement; he has scored in double digits in three of his last four games after reaching that mark only five times in his first twenty appearances this season. Over this stretch—which began as BYU ended a four-game losing streak with a win at Baylor—he is averaging twelve points per game while shooting nearly forty-seven percent from the field.
AJ Dybantsa’s performance against Iowa State brought his season total to six hundred seventy-three points—a figure that ties him for twelfth most in program history for single-season scoring alongside Chase Fischer’s tally from the 2015–16 campaign (in thirty-seven games). With another strong showing on Tuesday night, Dybantsa could become only the sixth player ever at BYU to reach seven hundred points in one season and would be among just twenty freshmen nationwide since 2000 to achieve that milestone.
Senior Keba Keita contributed significantly last week by averaging six-and-a-half points along with seven-and-a-half rebounds per game while maintaining an eighty-six percent field goal percentage across two games. He is currently tied for sixteenth place on BYU’s all-time blocks list and ranks thirteenth nationally among NCAA men’s basketball players for field goal percentage this season.
With Richie Saunders sidelined for the remainder of the year due to injury, offensive leadership will fall largely to AJ Dybantsa and Robert Wright III as they approach several program milestones as one of its top-scoring duos historically.
Khadim Mboup matched his career high with ten rebounds—including three offensive boards—in Saturday’s win over Iowa State; so far this season, BYU remains undefeated when he secures double-digit rebounds.
