Can BYU Improve its Fairly Forgettable NCAA Tournament History by Winning Tough Big 12 Games?

Coach Mark Pope stated on Sunday that BYU’s men’s basketball team won’t be scared by any of the teams it plays in the NCAA Tournament the rest of the month because the squad competed in the competitive Big 12 this past season with surprisingly favorable results.

However, the Cougars have another challenge when they play upstart Duquesne in this first-round match on Thursday at CHI Heath Center Arena (10:40 a.m. MDT, TruTV). With the exception of its 1981 Elite Eight run led by Danny Ainge and its 2011 Sweet 16 run led by Jimmer Fredette, BYU’s Big Dance history is largely forgotten.

 

The victories over Wofford and Gonzaga in 2011 were the first and only times BYU has won more than two games in an NCAA Tournament since 1981. After all, BYU’s record in the Big Dance is a dismal 15–33.

And then there’s this: whether merited or not, BYU has the distinction of having made the most NCAA Tournament trips (30 and counting) without ever reaching the Final Four. Missouri and Xavier, with 29 points apiece, are next, but neither team made the Big Dance this year.

 

Four teams—Tennessee (25), Alabama and Creighton (24), and Utah State (23), will be in the Field of 68 in 2024, trailing the Cougars, Musketeers, and Tigers.

To fulfill a dream for its supporters that truly began to take root in 1981—when Ainge’s legendary drive and basket in a Sweet 16 game gave the underdog Cougars a 51-50 victory over Notre Dame in Atlanta—BYU needs to win four games over the course of the next two weeks.

 

As the sixth seed, BYU defeated No. 3 UCLA and No. 11 Princeton in Providence, Rhode Island, to get to the game against the Irish, a formidable national basketball team back then. But following those three thrilling victories, No. 1 Virginia and 7-foot-4 phenom Ralph Sampson faced Ainge and teammates Fred Roberts, Steve Trumbo, Greg Kite, and Steve Craig, who would later marry Marie Osmond twice, and lost 74-60 in Atlanta.

While Virginia advanced to the Final Four, one of BYU’s greatest teams ever left Provo with regrets about what may have been. Since then, the Cougars—who, if it matters anything, are a No. 6 seed this year—haven’t been near.