BYU will face a familiar foe this weekend as it travels to Salt Lake City to take on the Utah Utes in the first Big 12 basketball matchup between both schools.
The last time these schools were in a conference together was in 2011 when both teams were in the Mountain West Conference. Back then, it was Jimmer Fredette, the National Player of the Year and the last NBA draft pick to come out of Provo, who was leading BYU to conference wins against Utah.
Last season, in its most recent matchup, Utah came away with a 73-69 win against a then-unbeaten No. 14 ranked BYU team that would eventually compete in March Madness.
Unlike last time though, Utah will be without the star play of Branden Carlson, who is now in the NBA on the Oklahoma City Thunder’s roster. Along with that, BYU’s first-year coach Kevin Young will get to experience his first rivalry game between the two schools

But Utah senior Gabe Madsen, who’s 16.3 points per game leads the team, will be someone BYU is well acquainted with due to his performance from last year. When BYU faced Utah, Madsen not only led Utah with 17 points that game, but he also hit a dagger three, one of five he made, to put Utah up 71-64 with just over a minute of game time remaining.
Though BYU had rallied from a 16-point deficit to make it a one possession game, it wouldn’t be able to take the lead as Utah would finally start to make shots after enduring an 8-minute stretch where it couldn’t make a field goal.
More recently though, Utah won its last game 73-65 against a TCU squad that had just beaten BYU 71-67 four days prior.
While Madsen would lead the team in points again with 17, he shot only 4 of 15 from the field. But with the stellar play of Keanu Dawes off the bench, Utah showed that it is capable of not only winning games, but also controlling them as it neve allowed TCU to lead despite inefficient shooting from Madsen.
Keanu Dawes did NOT hold back👏👏
— Big 12 Studios (@big12studios) January 16, 2025
16 Points and 6 Rebounds
Keanu Dawes Highlights👀#Big12MBB | @UtahMBB pic.twitter.com/XD4azmOsT9
BYU will also need to be careful of Utah's ability to pass the ball as it has the most assists in the Big 12 with an average of 20.31 per game and the best assist to turnover ratio in the conference.
With BYU’s Egor Demin averaging six assists per game, second highest in the Big 12, it will be interesting to see if his playmaking ability will impact the game more than Utah’s ability to share the ball. Considering Demin also had eight assists in a 85-69 Cougars victory over Oklahoma State, it will be quite the challenge for Utah to limit him.

Coming into this game, both teams are in very similar positions to one another. Utah is 10-6 while BYU is 11-5. Both have the same conference record of 2-3 and BYU is fifth highest in the conference for points per game while Utah is sixth. To top it all off, BYU and Utah are also top-three rebounding teams in the conference.
So with both teams being much better offensively than defensively, the likely winner will be who can cause the most disruption on defense whether it is steals, three point defense and limiting of offensive rebounds.
While the series between the two has remained competitive over the years, with Utah winning four of the last seven games against BYU, Utah still hasn’t appeared in March Madness since 2016 when it lost to Gonzaga in the Round of 32.
However, Utah is coming off one of its best seasons over the last five years as it managed to finish sixth in the Pac-12 standings and make it all the way to the semifinals in the NIT tournament before it lost to Indiana State.
Whether or not this is the year Utah makes it back to March Madness remains to be seen, but a win against the Cougars now would only help Utah as it makes a push to get back to the big stage.
Regardless, BYU will need to come prepared against Utah not only to continue building on the momentum it had in the Oklahoma State game, but to reclaim the pride of being the latest winner in the rivalry.
Tipoff will happen tonight, Jan. 18, at 7 p.m. time and will be available to stream on ESPN+.