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BOSTON — Win or lose, Saturday night’s wild game between No. 3 UConn and No. 7 BYU at TD Garden in Boston was always going to be the AJ Dybantsa Game.
Without him, the game wouldn’t have been scheduled. The teams wouldn’t have met unless it was in the NCAA Tournament next spring. And the Cougars never would have run the parquet floor beneath the Boston Celtics’ 17 NBA championship banners 40 minutes from his home in Brockton, Massachusetts.
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And win or lose, the game Dybantsa made possible was going to help BYU’s seeding in the NCAA Tournament next spring by boosting its strength of schedule.
It is, after all, the first time a top-10 BYU team played another top-10 opponent since the height of Jimmermania in 2011.
TD Garden had one open date for a college game, an organizer said. BYU and UConn eagerly agreed. So did Fox Sports, which cleared out a college football night for a matchup this juicy, with each team fielding three players listed on ESPN’s Top 100.
BYU did lose Saturday, 86-84, after a furious, improbable, hair-raising comeback, fueled by full-court pressure and a bewildering array of defenses dialed up by BYU coach Kevin Young.
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But if you watched the game, you’ll always remember it as the Dybantsa Game for what the freshman did on the floor during the final 15 minutes.
The first half of his homecoming was a baptism by fire. Dybantsa struggled to four points during the opening 20 minutes, when he twice was called for traveling, cast up an airball and missed two free throws.
In the second half, he was a phoenix rising, twisting and floating above the Huskies, draining shots nobody else would.
“That’s as high a level of shot-making as you’re going to see in college basketball,” said UConn coach Danny Hurley. “He hasn’t been making the 3s, at least to start the year. He’s been a rim guy, but he had the whole bag going tonight.”
Hurley knows ball, too. His team is hunting a third NCAA title in four years, something only…
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Publish date : 2025-11-16 06:48:00
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