Mountaineers Bag Fifth Quad 1 Victory of the Season on Saturday Night Against 19th-Ranked BYU

Saturday, February 28

Morgantown, W.Va.

5:30 p.m.

West Virginia University

17-12,8-8Big 12

BYU

20-9,8-8Big 12

BYU

West Virginia

WVU men's basketball game action vs BYU Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.

Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks

Mountaineers Bag Fifth Quad 1 Victory of the Season on Saturday Night Against 19th-Ranked BYU

February 28, 2026 08:26 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Photo Gallery

By: John Antonik

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia ended its three-game losing streak in style by defeating 19^th-ranked BYU 79-71 before a sell-out crowd of 13,799 tonight at Hope Coliseum.

The Mountaineers jumped out to a 40-26 halftime lead and withstood a late Cougar charge to secure their 17^th victory of the season and another important Quad 1 triumph.

It was West Virginia's fifth Quad 1 victory of the season and keeps the Mountaineers in the NCAA Tournament conversation with a relatively weak field of bubble teams.

It was WVU's second win over a ranked conference foe, which further boosts its postseason portfolio.

It also evens West Virginia's Big 12 record to 8-8 and in a three-way tie for eighth place in the No. 1 basketball league in the country with BYU and Cincinnati while now owning the tiebreaker over both teams.

"First and foremost, I thought Hope Coliseum was special today and I had a feeling it would be," West Virginia coach Ross Hodge said. "I'm just super-appreciative of what makes this place special. We've lost some tough ones in this stretch, and to have a sellout crowd and the energy from the jump was amazing."

Tonight, the Mountaineers did a tremendous job of playing team defense against projected lottery pick AJ Dybansta, who scored 20, but was five points fewer than his season average and nine points fewer than what he's scored in his last three games against Arizona, Iowa State and UCF.

West Virginia used a tag-team approach to limiting Dybansta, led by 6-foot-9 senior forward Brenen Lorient, who matches Dybansta's size and made a big deflection on a Dybansta 3-point attempt when the Cougars were mounting a late comeback.

Lorient grabbed nine rebounds, including seven on the offensive glass, to compliment an outstanding 18-point, three-assist, two-block, one-steal night.

Honor Huff tallied a team-best 19 points to pace WVU's five-player, double-figure scoring attack.

Freshman DJ Thomas came off the bench to contribute 13 - all but two of those coming in the first half to help the Mountaineers to their double-digit advantage - while Jasper Floyd and Chance Moore chipped in with 11 each.

"Jasper got us off to a great start with his command on both ends of the floor," Hodge observed. "We got incredible contributions from a lot of people, and that's typically been when we're at our best."

West Virginia's defense limited the high-powered Cougars to points on less than 50% of their offensive possessions tonight and turned 12 BYU turnovers into 12 points.

Offensively, WVU scored on 57.4% of its possessions and held the lead for more than three/fourths of the game after Thomas' conventional three-point play with 6:41 left in the first half put it ahead 23-22.

That began a 17-4 run to end the first half.

Robert Wright III led all scorers with 23 points for BYU, which drops to 20-9 overall.

"I thought our attention to detail defensively in the first half was really good," Hodge said. "You knew Rob and AJ were going to get it going; you just wanted to make it hard - and they made some hard ones. We knew they weren't going to go away because they've done it all year long."

West Virginia returns to the road to play at Kansas State on Tuesday night before wrapping up the regular season next Friday evening in Morgantown against UCF.