BYU’s AJ Dybantsa has added another major line to a season already packed with them. The Cougars star was named the 2025-26 Big 12 Male Athlete of the Year, becoming the first BYU athlete to take home the award.
The honor was voted on by a 16-member media panel, with each Big 12 school represented by one voter. Every conference school nominated one male and one female athlete from the 2025-26 school year, and those nominees had to be in good academic standing while also competing in a league-sponsored sport. The award was open to student-athletes from the Big 12’s 16 full-member institutions.
Dybantsa’s selection puts him in some select company. He is the fourth basketball player to win the award since 2020 and the eighth overall. TCU’s Olivia Miles was named the Big 12 Female Athlete of the Year.
The freshman forward’s production made the case on its own. Dybantsa led the nation in scoring and finished with 894 points, the third-most by a freshman in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history. He scored in double figures in all 35 games for BYU and delivered a 43-point outing in a win over rival Utah at the Marriott Center, setting a BYU freshman record.
He also became the third Cougar to earn consensus First Team All-American honors after putting together a huge all-around season: 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 at the line. Dybantsa was also named the Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year, and he joined a short list in Big 12 history as one of two players to post a 30/10/10 triple-double after going for 33 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists against Eastern Washington.
He was a consensus first team All-American and first team All-Big 12, though the Big 12 Player of the Year went to Arizona guard Jaden Bradley.
Dybantsa’s season ended with another milestone in June, when the Washington Wizards selected him No. 1 overall in the 2026 NBA Draft. That made him the fourth Big 12 player to go first in the draft, alongside Oklahoma State’s Cade Cunningham, Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins and Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin.
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