After 2 decades heading west, No. 20 BYU goes east for 1st Big 12 Tournament

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After a decade in the desert (and then some), BYU men's basketball embarks on a new journey Wednesday when the fifth-seeded Cougars open the Big 12 tournament championship against UCF (10:30 a.m. MDT, ESPN2).

In a season of firsts, the Cougars aren't in Las Vegas anymore.

No. 20-ranked BYU (22-9) spent the past decade at Orleans Arena with the West Coast Conference, and all but a couple of years during its tenure in the Mountain West when the tournament moved to Denver.

Now the Cougars are trading in the bright lights of the Strip for the famous barbecue amid a major glow up of the headquarters of T-Mobile and Hallmark known equally for quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his coach, former BYU offensive lineman and graduate assistant Andy Reid.

"It's really cool," BYU guard Dallin Hall said. "We're excited to get in the gym tomorrow and play. This is a great, great place and we saw the arena on media day. It's a really special place."

Las Vegas grew to become the epicenter of college basketball — at least on the west coast — as it hosted as many as five conference tournaments in the two weeks prior to the NCAA Tournament.

But with BYU's move to the Big 12 and the upcoming dissolution of the Pac-12, it's no wonder that eyes have turned east — to a site just 10.4 miles away from where early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were driven from their homes before eventually settling in the Salt Lake Valley.

Irony exists all around this city for BYU, which is owned and operated by the church. Not that head coach Mark Pope is thinking much about early church history at the moment, or even his unfamiliar surroundings.

"I kind of think this is the epicenter of college basketball," Pope said. "We're just so happy to be here and so happy to be a part of this league."

BYU will face UCF, the 12th-seeded team in the Big 12 that beat Oklahoma State, 77-62 in the first game of the tournament Tuesday. Ibrahima Diallo had 17 points, 11 rebounds, three steals and two blocks to lead the Knights (17-14), and C.J. Walker added 12 points, four rebounds and two blocks.

UCF — another of the four Big 12 newcomers alongside BYU, Cincinnati and Houston — is well acquainted with BYU as one of the handful of teams to face the Cougars twice. The Knights lost 63-58 to the Cougars in the first meeting in Orlando before a 90-88 setback in Provo.

But if the old adage that it's hard to beat a good team three times in a season is true, then BYU may be on upset alert.

We have to start studying them again and we have to try to find adjustments that we can make, because we had two close games," UCF coach Johnny Dawkins said after Tuesday's win. "They're a very good basketball team. Mark (Pope) has done a very good job with this group. We need to study them this evening and find out the things we need to do better. All we focused on coming into this tournament was Oklahoma State, because you never know if that's going to be your last game or not, and so you pour everything into it, and now we will pour everything into BYU."

The Cougars are led by Jaxson Robinson, the senior from Ada, Oklahoma who averaged 13.9 points on 43% shooting en route to Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year honors.

BYU didn't place a single player on the All-Big 12 first, second or third team — Hall, Robinson, Fousseyni Traore and Spencer Johnson earned honorable mention honors. But Robinson is as deserving as they come as the league's top reserve, and Pope split the third-most votes for coach of the year by the Associated Press with Texas Tech's Grant McCasland.

"Jax is my guy, and he works his tail off," Hall said. "He's always the last one shooting in the gym, putting up extra shots, and just putting in extra work. His road has gotten him here, and it's going to keep going; he's got big things ahead of him. I'm super happy for him. It's obviously well deserved; I think he's the best sixth man in the country. He's a big-time player, an NBA-level guy."

The Cougars practiced Tuesday at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and won't get practice time in the T-Mobile Center until pregame warmups. They have an option available for shootaround at 7:30 a.m. local time, but Pope said they probably won't use it because "that's the equivalent of 5:30 for some of us."

"We like to get in the gym just for our guys to feel the light," he added. "But we have an hour to warm up in the gym."

His starting point guard isn't worried.

"We should be all right. We've got some big-time shooters on this team," Hall said. "Our warmup is all we need to get ready to go. It'll be great for us."

After arriving in Kansas City via charter Monday night and ending the evening with Joe's Kansas City BBQ — everyone except Pope, as the coach joked his wife Lee Anne has him on a strict diet that won't let him eat past 5 p.m. because he's packing on a few unwanted pounds.

"I think the guys are excited," Pope said. "They woke up this morning a little bit tired, just because of the time change. But we had a good practice today, and they were just like every team that has been working towards this all year long and not working towards a place where this is going to be any different than any other game it took them to be here."

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