These are remarkable times for BYU sports

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No matter what happens in Thursday’s Sweet 16 showdown with No. 2 seed Alabama, BYU athletics is in the midst of a golden run. If the Cougars were a publicly traded company and you had bought their stock a few years ago, you’d be able to retire.

In seven months the Cougars have made national headlines in football, basketball, track, cross-country and the Olympic Games. Their latest victories came in last week’s NCAA Tournament, when the Cougars dispatched VCU and Wisconsin.

Things weren’t looking so good for the basketball team the first two-and-half months of the season. They were 11-6 in mid-January, and five of those wins came against nonconference hors d’oeuvres — Central Arkansas, UC Riverside, Queens University, Idaho and Mississippi Valley State. The Cougars began conference play by losing four of six games.

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Since then they have won 15 of 18 games, climbed to No. 17 in the national rankings, and won two games in the NCAA Tournament to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2011 and only the third time in the modern era.

BYU coach Kalani Sitake celebrates a punt return for a touchdown by Parker Kingston during the Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio on Saturday, Dec. 28, 2024. | Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

All of this comes on the heels of a football season in which BYU won 11 of 13 games and finished No. 13 in the final poll, clobbering Colorado in the Alamo Bowl. They were unbeaten through their first nine games and climbed to No. 7 in the AP rankings before losing two games by four and five points.

Only four schools who made the Sweet 16 also finished in the top 25 of the national football polls — BYU, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Alabama.

While the football team was rolling, BYU won both the men’s and women’s NCAA cross-country championships, becoming only the fifth school ever to pull off the double.

This…

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Source link : https://www.deseret.com/sports/2025/03/25/byu-sports-have-enjoyed-heady-times-in-2024-2025/

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Publish date : 2025-03-26 03:00:00

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