Seventh place is the most respect BYU women’s basketball has received before a Big 12 season. It is also a demand.
The conference coaches put BYU seventh in their 2026-27 preseason poll Thursday, behind Arizona State and ahead of Colorado. Delaney Gibb was one of four unanimous selections to the 10-player preseason all-conference team. For a program that entered its first three Big 12 seasons looking up from the lower half, both votes matter.
They do not say the same thing.
Gibb’s vote says the league sees a proven star. BYU’s vote says the rest of the roster has moved into the conference’s middle tier, with no guarantee it stays there. The Cougars received 137 points, six behind sixth-place Arizona State and 11 ahead of eighth-place Colorado. That is a real promotion, but not a private lane.
Last season explains why. BYU won 26 games and reached the WBIT championship game in Lee Cummard’s first year. In Big 12 play, it also finished 11th in scoring and 14th in field-goal percentage. The Cougars created second chances, defended shots and still spent too many possessions asking difficult makes to repair ordinary offense.
The next step is not finding out whether Gibb can carry more. It is making sure she does not have to.
The poll gives BYU credit without giving it cover
Oklahoma State led the poll with 215 points and seven first-place votes. TCU followed with 212 and six. Baylor and West Virginia took the next two spots, then Kansas, Arizona State and BYU.
The useful section for the Cougars is the middle:
| Preseason place | Team | Poll points | Gap from BYU |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Kansas | 160 | BYU trails by 23 |
| 6 | Arizona State | 143 | BYU trails by 6? |
| 7 | BYU | 137 | Baseline |
| 8 | Colorado | 126 | BYU leads by 11 |
| 9 | Kansas State | 121 | BYU leads by 16 |
| 10 | Texas Tech | 103 | BYU leads by 34 |
There is one correction the raw placement makes easy to miss: BYU is only six poll points behind Arizona State, not a full tier away. Kansas is 23 points ahead. Colorado and Kansas State sit 11 and 16 behind. The coaches have placed BYU inside a five-team group separated by 39 points, from Kansas at 160 to Kansas State at 121.
That is enough support to call seventh meaningful. It is not enough separation to treat seventh as safe.
BYU Athletics notes that this is the program’s highest preseason Big 12 position and that the Cougars have beaten their preseason placement in two of three conference seasons. Last year’s ninth-place finish was their best since joining the league. A seventh-place pick asks them to improve again after the conference has already adjusted its expectations.
The women’s basketball schedule will make the ballot argument tangible. BYU opens league play at Arizona, then sees Kansas State, Houston, Baylor and Arizona State across its first five conference games. By Jan. 16, Oklahoma State arrives in Provo. The Cougars will meet the preseason favorite before they have time to live off the preseason compliment.
Gibb has already earned her half of the vote
Gibb averaged 18.3 points, 5.1 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 2.2 steals last season. She scored at least 20 points 12 times and reached double figures in 29 of 38 games. BYU went 12-4 when she recorded five or more assists.
That last number is the bridge between her honor and the team’s poll position.
A unanimous preseason selection can become an excuse to put every difficult possession in one player’s hands. Gibb is good enough to survive that plan for stretches. She scored a career-high 37 at Utah and averaged 29 points, six rebounds and six assists during BYU’s three-game winning streak to close the regular season.
The same season showed why survival is not the goal. In conference games, Big 12 statistics list Gibb with 75 assists and 81 turnovers. She still ranked in the league’s top 10 in assists and steals while carrying BYU’s largest creation burden. The problem is not that she failed to create. It is that so many possessions required her to beat the first defender and solve whatever came next.
Her summer with Canada added another useful version of her game. Across five games at the Olympic pre-qualifying tournament, she produced 12 assists against five turnovers and helped Canada secure a place in the 2028 Olympic qualifying tournaments. Her shot swung from game to game, but she still rebounded and defended. Our five-game Canada review found the cleanest lesson: a bad shooting night does not have to become a bad floor game.
BYU needs that complete player. It also needs to stop treating complete as infinite.
Last year’s conference profile was built on extra tries
The 9-9 Big 12 record did not come from one statistical identity. BYU defended opponent shooting well, chased misses and took plenty of threes. The conversion was the problem.
| 2025-26 Big 12 games | BYU figure | Conference position |
|---|---|---|
| Scoring offense | 67.3 points per game | 11th |
| Field-goal percentage | 39.5% | 14th |
| 3-pointers made | 7.7 per game | 5th |
| 3-point percentage | 31.6% | 9th |
| Offensive rebounds | 12.7 per game | 3rd |
| Opponent field-goal percentage | 40.1% | 3rd |
| Scoring margin | minus-2.2 per game | 12th |
Those numbers describe a team that worked hard enough to keep giving itself a chance. BYU ranked third in offensive rebounds and fifth in made threes, useful traits for surviving a cold half. It also finished 14th in overall shooting and was outscored by 2.2 points per league game.
The extra possessions were covering for the first possession.
That can work often enough to reach 9-9. It is a thin way to protect seventh place. Offensive rebounds disappear against some frontcourts. A high-volume three-point plan becomes fragile when only 31.6 percent fall. Gibb can rescue late clocks, but every rescue asks her to spend energy BYU also needs for playmaking and defense.
The roster’s continuity gives Cummard a chance to change that equation rather than replace it. BYU’s official offseason update said four starters return, including Gibb and Olivia Hamlin. Hamlin earned All-Big 12 honorable mention and a place on the All-Freshman Team. The current BYU roster also retains Sydney Benally, Kailey Woolston, Kambree Barber Taylor and Brinley Cannon in a guard-heavy group.
Continuity only matters if familiar players receive harder jobs. A returning name is not automatically a second creator.
Hamlin may decide whether seventh becomes a ceiling
Gibb is already on the preseason team. The biggest movement available to BYU may come from a player who is not.
Hamlin entered the offseason with honorable-mention and All-Freshman recognition. That gives BYU a second perimeter player the league has already had to notice. If her role grows from productive freshman to dependable advantage-maker, the offense changes before any shot goes up.
The Cougars need someone besides Gibb who can begin a useful action. That might mean Hamlin turns a closeout into a paint touch. It might mean Benally organizes a possession early enough for Gibb to catch against a tilted defense. It might mean Woolston’s spacing punishes help before the lane closes. None of those jobs requires BYU to pretend every guard is a point guard.
They require the first pass to do more than return the ball to Gibb.
BYU’s schedule supplies an immediate stress test. The Cougars face Baylor, Arizona State, Colorado, Oklahoma State and TCU during a seven-game January stretch. Six opponents in that run reached the 2026 NCAA Tournament, according to BYU’s schedule release. Good defenses will make the first action fail. The seventh-place version of BYU has a second action ready.
The ninth-place version waits for Gibb to invent one.
The defense is already closer to the target
BYU’s conference opponents shot 40.1 percent last season, the third-lowest mark in the league. That is the best evidence that the 26 wins were not built only against a soft nonconference schedule.
The Cougars also allowed 69.6 points per Big 12 game, 10th in the conference. Those two numbers can coexist when turnovers, free throws, pace and second chances add pressure beyond the initial shot. They show that shot defense was a strength, not that every defensive possession was complete.
Gibb averaged 2.2 steals across the full season. Hamlin averaged 1.7 in conference games, and BYU had two interior players among the league’s listed shot-block leaders. The pieces can create stops.
The next step is making those stops cheaper. A clean defensive rebound saves a second rotation. A controlled offensive possession keeps the defense from facing transition. Better offense is part of the defensive improvement because missed shots and live-ball turnovers decide how much floor must be covered.
That is why the 39.5 percent shooting figure matters beyond the points column. Seventh place will ask BYU to play fewer desperate possessions at both ends.
Nov. 3 starts the proof, not the celebration
BYU opens against Idaho State on Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. Mountain in the Marriott Center. The official schedule then builds toward conference play at Arizona on Dec. 19.
The nonconference job is not to protect a ranking. BYU is not nationally ranked by this vote, and seventh in the Big 12 does not come with an NCAA Tournament bid. The job is to identify which lineups can score without squeezing every possession through Gibb.
Watch who initiates when she sits. Watch whether the ball reaches the paint before the clock becomes a problem. Watch whether offensive rebounds remain an advantage instead of a requirement. Watch whether Hamlin’s next step includes creation for teammates, not just a larger scoring total.
Gibb’s unanimous honor is deserved. Two straight unanimous preseason selections, a Freshman of the Year award and a first-team season leave little mystery about how coaches view her.
The team vote is more interesting because it is less settled. BYU sits six points behind Arizona State and 11 ahead of Colorado. That is a middle tier waiting for one team to separate.
The Cougars have the star and the continuity to do it. Last season’s conference shooting says exactly where the work begins.
Sources and further reading
- BYU Athletics: Gibb unanimously selected and BYU picked seventh for the team finish, returning honors, Gibb’s season totals and the Nov. 3 opener.
- Big 12 Conference: 2026-27 preseason honors and coaches’ poll for all 16 poll totals, first-place votes, voting rules and the preseason team.
- Big 12 Conference: 2025-26 conference statistics for BYU’s league-only offense, shooting, rebounding, defense and individual assist/turnover figures.
- Big 12 Conference: 2025-26 postseason awards for Gibb’s first-team selection and Hamlin’s honorable-mention and All-Freshman honors.
- BYU Athletics: 2026-27 Big 12 schedule release for the conference sequence, returning-team context and January’s NCAA Tournament-opponent stretch.
- BYU Athletics: 2026-27 conference matchup release for the four returning starters and current supporting-cast details.
- BYU Sport Nuts: women’s basketball hub, roster, schedule, roster and schedule map and Gibb’s Canada tournament review.
