BYU will face Texas in NCAA Tournament first-round game – Deseret News

If the sixth-seeded BYU Cougars listened to Tuesday night’s television broadcast of the NCAA Tournament First Four game pitting No. 11 seeds Texas and North Carolina State, they will have plenty of motivation in their first-round game on Thursday.

Before Tramon Mark hit the game-winner with a second left to give Texas a 68-66 victory and a date with BYU on Thursday at Moda Center in Portland, Ore., television analysts Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley both predicted that the winner would handle the Cougars at 5:25 p.m. MDT in the Big Dance.

Texas led 64-56 with 1:42 remaining before NC State rallied to tie it.

The commentators posited that BYU is not a threat to either team without second-leading scorer Richie Saunders, who suffered an ACL injury on Feb. 14 against Colorado and has not played since.

They did mention that BYU has one of the best players in the country, freshman sensation AJ Dybantsa. Vitale said the 6-foot-9 small forward should be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.

Counting that 90-86 overtime win over CU in which Saunders played less than a minute, the 23-11 Cougars went 5-5 without the senior, including wins over No. 6 Iowa State and No. 10 Texas Tech in Provo and a 2-1 record at the recent Big 12 tournament in Kansas City.

Coach Kevin Young and his staff were encouraged by the win over Texas Tech and the way the Cougars defended in Kansas City, saying it felt like they had an entirely different team. Barkley and Vitale apparently didn’t get the memo.

BYU flew into Portland on Tuesday morning and will be the more rested team on Thursday, as Texas must make the trip from Dayton, Ohio, to the Pacific Northwest; Young said on Sunday that the Cougars would mostly focus on themselves until they learned their first-round opponent, but acknowledged that his assistants were assigned to study both teams.

“I think the positive side there is it gives you less time to overthink it,” Young said. “And I think there’s actually a lot of power in that, focusing on yourself right now, trying to just get better at the things that make us good and have made us good during this little resurgence that we’ve had.”

Young said he watched both Texas and NC State on Sunday night after the bids and seedings were announced and found them to be somewhat alike.

“Both have similar types of profiles in terms of both having really good offenses,” he said. “So we will try to use our next few days wisely to prepare for both of them.”

Now the Cougars can focus on Texas (19-14), which had lost its last three games before holding off the Wolfpack’s late-game rally.

Tuesday, big man Matas Vokietaitis had 15 points for Texas before fouling out. He was 7 of 12 from the free-throw line, as Texas dominated inside.

Coached by former Arizona coach Sean Miller, the Longhorns will have an advantage inside against the Cougars, so it will be incumbent upon BYU big man Keba Keita to stay out of foul trouble.

Vokietaitis, a 7-foot sophomore from Lithuania, averages 15.5 points and 6.8 rebounds per game. He shoots 63.1% from the field.

The Longhorns’ leading scorer is Dailyn Swain, 6-8 junior who averages 17.8 points per game.

Tuesday, Swain and Mark combined for 30 points and Chendall Weaver chipped in 11 points and 10 rebounds.