For the 13th time in the last 15 years, at least one First Four team has made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament after the No. 11 Texas Longhorns took down the No. 6 seed BYU Cougars on Thursday at the Moda Center in Portland, 79-71, to advance to face the No. 3 Gonzaga Bulldogs on Saturday.
“I think the last couple of games from a defensive perspective is about as good as we’ve done all year,” Texas head coach Sean Miller said after Thursday’s win. “When you connect the defense with the offense
that we’ve played, you have a team that’s certainly dangerous. That’s what I would call us right now.”
With a team-high 23 points on career-best 10-of-17 shooting and a career-best 16 rebounds, Texas sophomore center Matas Vokietaitis became the first player in school history to notch a 20-point, 15-rebound performance in the NCAA Tournament. The 16 rebounds by Vokitaitis, including nine offensive boards, finished two shy of the single-game tournament record for the Longhorns.
And in another clutch late-game effort, graduate guard Tramon Mark made four free throws in the final 18 seconds to secure the victory in finishing with 19 points and a career-high four blocks as the Houston product took on a key role in helping to defend BYU’s star freshman forward AJ Dybantsa.
The potential No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft scored a game-high 35 points, but the Horns were able to limit Dybantsa to 1-of-7 shooting from three and force him to commit five of the team’s seven turnovers, forcing enough inefficiency from the Cougars’ standout to lead for 39:07 and extend the margin to as many as 17 points in the second half.
“We understood that he has the ability to score like nobody else. What we talked about is a jump shot by him is a victory for us. What we couldn’t afford is that he puts Dailyn in great foul trouble or he fouls our entire team out,” Miller said.
“Among the many things he does, he puts so many fouls on the opponent that he wears out the other team. We were able to play him. Again, I see he had 12 free throws, but these guys were able to play all the way till the end.”
The late-season slide onto the tournament bubble forced Texas to make its way out of Dayton and take a late-night flight to Portland, but after making it past BYU, the advantage the Longhorns have gained is avoiding a second-round matchup against a No. 1 or No. 2 seed.
That may ultimately not matter much against a Gonzaga team that is 31-3 after surviving a difficult non-conference schedule that included wins over Oklahoma, Creighton, Arizona State, Maryland, Kentucky, UCLA, and Oregon, an acknowledgement of the WCC’s mid-major status.
In the program’s final season in the conference before moving to the Pac-12, the Zags beat Santa Clara to win the conference tournament after going 16-2 in league play.
“It’s a special feeling to go out the right way,” said Gonzaga forward Graham Ike, who was voted tournament Most Outstanding Player. “Ultimately, we ended where we started this. It started out with championships and those teams that came before us. We just wanted to continue the success that they had. We were proud we could do that.”
Slotted at No. 7 in the NET rankings, the Bulldogs had an argument to land on a higher seed line, but the committee had Gonzaga as the third No. 3 seed and 11th overall in its seed list, ultimately pushing Mark Few’s program closer to the team’s No. 16 adjusted efficiency than its NET ranking.
The Zags are led by Ike, a Wyoming transfer who earned WCC Player of the Year honors in averaging 19.7 points and 8.2 rebounds per game, a physical 6’9, 260-pounder who boasts a soft touch with his left hand that allows him to make 70.9 percent of his shots at the rim and 52.1 percent of his mid-range attempts. Ike has also made 34.3 percent of his three-pointers on 2.2 attempts per game.
Like BYU, Gonzaga has had to navigate the end of the season without a key secondary scoring option after forward Braden Huff suffered a season-ending knee injury in early January. Huff was averaging 17.8 points and 5.6 rebounds per game prior to his injury.
With Huff out, more focus for the Bulldogs has turned towards a backcourt that features four guards averaging between seven and 11.2 points per game with Tyon Grant-Foster leading the way as a wing who picks up rebounding slack and leads the team with 38 blocks. The team’s best shooter is Mario Saint-Supery, a Spaniard who makes 41.6 percent of his triples on 3.3 attempts per game.
Gonzaga is 10th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency because the Bulldogs defend well inside the arc, finishing possessions with defensive rebounds, and force turnovers on 20.3 percent of opposing possessions. Because the Zags only shoot 33.5 percent from three, only a handful teams in the country took fewer shots from distance this season, relying instead on players like Ike scoring around the basket, getting second-chance opportunities, and avoiding turnovers. Within the team’s statistical profile, the most glaring weakness for Gonzaga is its inability to get to the free-throw line.
In the first round, Gonzaga pushed past Kennesaw State in a 73-64 victory that saw the Bulldogs hold the Owls to 36.2-percent shooting overall and 17.6-percent shooting from three. The Zags also struggled from distance with 3-of-18 shooting as Saint-Supery fouled out after going 1-of-7 from three, but the bench for the Bulldogs provided Few’s team with a 26-14 edge and Gonzaga got out in transition for a 12-2 margin in fast-break points.
Ike scored a game-high 19 points on 7-of-8 shooting from the free-throw line, but also turned the ball over four times. The key boost off the bench came from guard Davis Fogle, who scored 17 points in one of his most proflic offensive performances this season.
Texas, which has made the Round of 32 four times in the last five years, has only advanced to the Sweet 16 once since 2008, making a run to the Elite Eight three years ago. In the all-time series between the two programs, the Bulldogs have a 4-1 advantage with the only win by the Longhorns coming in Austin in 2022, a 93-74 victory keyed by 26 points from guard Tyrese Hunter.
Tip on Saturday at the Moda Center is at 6:10 p.m. Central on TBS.
