PROVO — BYU men’s basketball will open the season with lofty expectations. But the eighth-ranked Cougars by the Associated Press aren’t the early favorites to win the Big 12.
The Cougars received one of 16 first-place votes to finish second by a panel of league coaches, who overwhelming selected Houston to win the league. Fresh off an appearance in last year’s national championship game, Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars received 14 first-place votes and 224 points overall in the preseason all-conference selections revealed Thursday morning.
BYU was second with 204 points, followed by Texas Tech, Arizona and Iowa State. The Wildcats, who received 179 points in total, were the only other team to receive a first-place vote.
Houston led the preseason All-Big 12 team with three picks in Emanuel Sharp, Milos Uzan and Joseph Tugler.
BYU star freshman AJ Dybansa was one of four unanimous selections to the 10-player team, which also included returning tater-tot vet Richie Saunders, while Texas Tech also received two nods — including preseason player of the year JT Toppin.
After briefly flirting with the NBA draft, Saunders returned for his senior season after earning All-Big 12 first-team accolades a year ago, when he averaged a team-high 16.5 points per game on 51.8% shooting and 43.2% from 3-point range while leading the Cougars to their first Sweet 16 appearance since 2011.
Dybantsa signed with the Cougars as the No. 1 recruiting in the country by ESPN after a decorated prep career that saw the 6-foot-9 projected 2026 NBA draft pick earn McDonald’s All-American and Nike Hoop Summit honors before leading Team USA to the gold medal at the FIBA U19 World Cup in Switzerland.
Texas Tech’s LeJuan Watts earned preseason newcomer of the year honors, now on his third school in three years since transferring from Eastern Washington and Washington State.
Kansas’ Darryn Peterson was named the league’s preseason freshman of the year.
Alex Jensen’s first year at Utah has the Runnin’ Utes projected to finish 13th in the conference, ahead of UCF, Colorado and Arizona State.
The team is led by returning forward Keanu Dawes, who averaged 8.3 points, 6.4 rebounds and a team-high .614 shooting percentage as a sophomore, including finishing the campaign with a double-double in four of his last six contests.
Big 12 men’s basketball preseason poll
- 1 – Houston (14) – 224
- 2 – BYU (1) – 204
- 3 – Texas Tech – 200
- 4 – Arizona (1) – 179
- 5 – Iowa State – 170
- 6 – Kansas – 163
- 7 – Baylor – 137
- 8 – Cincinnati – 120
- 9 – K-State – 117
- 10 – TCU – 90
- 11 – West Virginia – 79
- 12 – Oklahoma State – 77
- 13 – Utah – 50
- 14 – UCF – 39
- 15 – Colorado – 37
- 16 – Arizona State – 34
Preseason All-Big 12 Team
- AJ Dybantsa, BYU*
- Richie Saunders, BYU
- Emanuel Sharp, Houston
- Joseph Tugler, Houston
- Milos Uzan, Houston*
- Tamin Lipsey, Iowa State
- Darryn Peterson, Kansas*
- P.J. Haggerty, K-State
- Christian Anderson, Texas Tech
- JT Toppin, Texas Tech*
- *-unanimous selection
Preseason Player of the Year: JT Toppin, Texas Tech
Preseason Newcomer of the Year: LeJuan Watts, Texas Tech
Preseason Freshman of the Year: Darryn Peterson, Kansas
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.