Week 17 AP poll results might surprise BYU basketball fans
BYU basketball just enjoyed its best week under head coach Kevin Young, and arguably the strongest week since 1988, the last time a BYU basketball squad won back-to-back games over ranked opponents.
After clobbering Kansas for a 34-point slobber-knocker under the Marriott Center lights in Provo, the Cougars took the fight to Tucson, Arizona to battle Caleb Love and the dynamic Arizona Wildcats in what would be a high-scoring affair that would sum a towering 191 points between both sides, as BYU left the McKale Center with a 96-95 victory.
Those 96 points were the most scored at that venue by a road team since… Jimmer Fredette and BYU layered a 99-point total with 49 points courtesy of Fredette in 2009.
BYU, a team that had failed to receive any votes in the AP poll since week 5, delivered the strongest total output of any team in the country during their tour through the Big 12 titans. On a four-game winning streak including wins over West Virginia and Kansas State, the Cougars are currently fifth in the Big 12 standings with a chance to leapfrog a few more teams up ahead.
So expectations were relatively high for this BYU team when the week 17 AP Poll rolled around.
Like the British Board of Film Classification waiting in agony for the 10 hour runtime of Paint Drying to conclude, we waited on the newest round of rankings for what felt like hours. Refreshing the ESPN home page for seemingly eons until the page restored upon a fresh batch of names and numbers, the national state of BYU basketball hanging in the balance.
BYU basketball is now ranked for the first time in the Kevin Young era. Hopefully a strong week of play can continue the Cougars’ steady ascent, as a place in the top 25 by season’s end could land the Cougars a very favorable position in the NCAA Tournament bracket.
