ARLINGTON, Texas — BYU baseball’s 2025 season came to an end on Thursday morning with a 4-1 defeat to Arizona in the Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship quarterfinal game at Globe Life Field.
The No. 4-seed Wildcats went up 3-0 through the fifth before the Cougars responded with a run in the top of the eighth. A fourth Arizona run in the bottom of the eighth sealed the quarterfinal win.
BYU scored a run on six hits with an error and seven left on base while the Wildcats plated four on nine hits with nine stranded.
Cougar reliever Garrison Sumner scattered three hits and a run over four innings while notching seven strikeouts. The BYU infield combined for its 49th double play of the season on Thursday, good for 11th nationally.
The Cougars capped the 2025 season at 28-27 overall and 10-20 in Big 12 play. BYU fought its way into its first Big 12 Baseball Championship with a 2-1 series win over Texas Tech in the final week of the regular season and capitalized on its trip to Arlington with a 2-0 win over No. 5 seed Arizona State to advance to to the quarterfinals. The win over the Sun Devils marked BYU’s first postseason victory since 2017.
BYU Highlights
- Parker Goff: 2-3, R, 2B
- Luke Anderson: 2-4, 2B
- Ryder Robinson: 1-4, RBI
Game Summary
Arizona jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning with a pair of solo home runs, including one off each foul pole. The Cougars kept the Wildcats from breaking the game open early with Brett Hansen pitching and Vest collecting a pop fly to strand the bases loaded.
Crew McChesney ended a scoreless fourth inning with a warning-track snag at 400 feet near the right-center wall. McChesney then looked to get the Cougar offense going in the top of the fifth with a leadoff walk. Parker Goff reached as well on a two-out single but a ground ball third-out stranded the pair.
The Wildcats extended their lead to 3-0 with a triple and RBI single in the bottom half of the fifth. Goff then threw out his 10th base runner of the year to end the scoring.
Anderson came within 90 feet of scoring the Cougars’ first run in the sixth with a ground-rule double and an ensuing groundout that moved him to third. A swinging strikeout in BYU’s next at bat stranded Anderson at third and left the Cougars empty-handed.
BYU stayed within striking distance after keeping Arizona off the board in the sixth and seventh. Sumner fanned the first two batters in the bottom of the sixth inning and completed the 1-2-3 inning with a groundout. In the seventh, he tallied his seventh strikeout before handing the ball off to Jaden Harris for the frame’s final out.
Goff sparked the Cougars again in the top of the eighth with a leadoff double to left, then took third on a wild pitch. Tate Gambill worked a full count and walked to give BYU runners on the corners before Ryder Robinson sent Goff home with an RBI single.
While the Cougars cut Arizona’s lead to 3-1 with the Robinson RBI, the Wildcats quickly responded with what proved to be a game-sealing RBI double in the bottom of the eighth for a 4-1 final score.