AJ Dybantsa named Big 12 Male Athlete of the Year

IRVING, Texas – BYU’s AJ Dybantsa was named the 2025-26 Big 12 Male Athlete of the Year on Thursday morning, marking the first time a Cougar has won the prestigious award.

Each Big 12 institution nominated one male and one female athlete of any classification who competed for their institution during the 2025-26 school year. Nominees were required to be in good academic standing and must have participated in a league-sponsored sport.

The award was open to student-athletes from the 16 full-member institutions that competed during the academic year. The winners were selected by a 16-member media panel, with each school represented by one voter.

Dybantsa becomes the fourth basketball player to earn the award since 2020 and eighth overall. TCU’s Olivia Miles was named the Big 12 Female Athlete of the Year.

The Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year led the nation in scoring, finishing with the third-most points scored by a freshman in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history, at 894. He scored in double figures in all 35 games as a Cougar, including a BYU freshman record 43-point performance in a win over rival Utah at the Marriott Center.

He became the third Cougar to be named a consensus First Team All-American after averaging 25.5 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game while shooting 51.0 percent from the field, 33.1 percent from three and 77.4 percent from the free throw line.  The 6-foot-9 forward is one of two players in Big 12 history with a 30/10/10 triple-double following his 33-point, 10-rebound, 10-assist performance in a win over Eastern Washington.

The Washington Wizards selected Dybantsa with the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft in June, making him the fourth Big 12 player to be the top pick, joining Oklahoma State’s Cade Cunningham, Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins and Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin.