- BYU defeated Utah 70-52 in the Big 12 Tournament's second round.
- A 20-2 third-quarter run helped BYU overturn a 9-point halftime deficit.
- Delaney Gibb led BYU with 19 points; Lani White scored 20 for Utah.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — They say it's difficult to beat the same team three times in a season.
Don't tell that to the BYU women.
Following a regular-season sweep over in-state rival Utah, the ninth-seeded Cougars sent the eighth-seeded Utes home early from the Big 12 women's basketball tournament in Kansas City with a 70-52 win in the second round Thursday afternoon.
Utah (19-12) managed just 16 points in the second half in the losing effort.
"I'm really grateful for this group and how connected they are," BYU head coach Lee Cummard said. "They want to do it for each other and for the jersey, the name on the front of the jersey. I hate that it comes at coach Petersen's expense to advance, because he does such a great job; he's got a great team. But glad that we were on the winning side of today's battle."
BYU (22-10) had been on the opposite end of a 17-2 run to closeout the first half, but used its own 20-2 run over the latter course of the third quarter to reclaim a lead and control a double-digit edge over Utah.
And once the Cougars got control, there was no looking back en route to the team's second-ever Big 12 Tournament win.
Delaney Gibb led the Cougars in scoring again over Utah with 19 points — including four made 3-pointers — eight assists and five rebounds in the win. Over the three games against Utah this season, Gibb has scored a combined 64 points.
BYU also got four 3-pointers out of Brinley Cannon, who managed six against the Utes in the first meeting, and an additional 12 points and eight rebounds from do-it-all forward Lara Rohkohl. And she did it in just 23 minutes after being in foul trouble early and then fouling out with just over two minutes left to play.
In Rohkohl's extended trip to bench in the first half with three fouls — in which the Cougars managed just 5 points in the quarter — Utah capitalized and erased a one-time 7-point BYU lead with a 17-2 run in the second quarter to control a 9-point halftime lead.
But that was about all Utah had in the tank Thursday afternoon.
THATS A DUB👐 pic.twitter.com/nSaVIJPMZL
— BYU Women's Hoops (@byuwbb) March 5, 2026
"BYU played really, really well in that third quarter and into the fourth," Utah head coach Gavin Petersen said. "I was really proud of our first half tonight. I thought we were playing Utah basketball — we were dialed in, our energy was good. Then, not sure what happened in that third quarter.
"We kind of got away from that, maybe started pressing a little bit too much, and then they gained momentum. And this time of year, momentum is hard to stop, and we just weren't able to get over the hump there in that third and fourth quarter."
BYU jumped out to a hot start offensively out of the halftime break and then employed a full-court press on defense to frustrate Utah's chances early. It worked on both fronts as the Cougars got shots to fall and forced Utah into multiple turnovers, including a stretch with five turnovers over a three minute period.
To cap off the quarter, Olivia Hamlin raised up deep behind the arc with time ticking away and got a bank shot 3-pointer to fall right as time expired to extend the BYU lead to 12 going into the final quarter.
And Utah had nothing left in the tank to combat the BYU assault, scoring just 9 points in the final quarter.
Lani White led the Utes in scoring with 20 points and four rebounds, but was the only Utah player to finish in double-digit scoring as the rest of the team struggled to find a consistent rhythm on offense. White was a significant contributor in Utah's second-quarter run and finished with 16 first-half points to lead all scores.
"We had a good first half," White said. "We were confident, and I think we had been talking about it all season that the third quarter is what hurts us, and it hurt us tonight. I'm really upset as a senior, because I'm wishing I could have done things different."
BYU opened up the game much like how it finished by connecting on six first quarter 3-pointers to control a 5-point lead at the first break. But the Cougars went cold and failed to make another 3-pointer in the second quarter before exploding for five more in the second half.
Cummard said his team played "stagnant" on both sides of the ball in that second quarter, which led to a "tangibly different" aspect to the game. But the message was simple going into the second half: be yourself.
"The overall message was, do what we do," Cummard said. "Our good is good enough, and I thought in the second half we just stayed right in that framework."
