This season, most viewers of BYU basketball would watch the Cougars and stand in awe as AJ Dybantsa torched team after team after team through the Big 12 gauntlet on his way to becoming the favorite for the number-one NBA Draft pick.
Especially as the Cougars slipped down the Big 12 Conference standings with injuries to key rotational players like Richie Saunders, AJ Dybantsa knew that the responsibility fell upon his freshman shoulders to elevate his team and drag the depleted depth as far as he could stretch them.
Averaging a nation-leading 25.5 points per game as a freshman is no small thing -- and it was completely necessary for Kevin Young's roster floundering down the stretch of the regular season.
AJ learned a great deal under Young, blooming behind the exceptional NBA-level program BYU basketball is establishing, and now feels he's learned what he needed to become the best professional basketball player in his power.
He suggested as much in a recent interview.
"I really would have averaged 30," Dybantsa shared on a podcast appearance at the end of May. "But in the beginning of the season -- this is kind of what a lot of NBA players are talking like -- I know you need a team to win. At the beginning of the season, I think I was being too passive. Passing the ball, trying to get everybody involved, and that kind of dropped my average."
"But as a scorer, like what am I looking at? I've learned not to look at the initial defender. Looking at help side, but college like we've seen, triple teams, tilts, a whole bunch of everything. So I kind of relied on my mid-post game a lot."
"I know that now. I'm not making that mistake again."
AJ Dybantsa claims he could average 30 in college:
— WizardsMuse (@WizardsMuse1) May 29, 2026
"I would have averaged 30... I think I was being too passive... I know that now, I'm not making that mistake again" pic.twitter.com/3mw18tn26i
Looking at his game log, you can spot the exact moment when Dybantsa made this realization. The team needed a captain to lead the charge, and there was no sharper spear than that in AJ's arsenal.
But 30 points per game feels like a bit of a stretch. No disrespect to AJ in the slightest -- he's probably the most talented player to ever suit up for BYU basketball -- but he broke the 30-point mark in just six of his final 17 games on the year. He averaged just 1.2 points per game, shy of a 30 average in that stretch, to his point, but 30 might be a bit of an exaggeration, assuming he doesn't mean he should have taken every shot for BYU's offense all year long.
Even with his heaviest offensive load of the year, AJ was still a touch shy of that 30-point pinnacle.
AJ doesn't make this statement with arrogance -- he's simply stating what he believes his offensive game is capable of, and sends this message as a warning shot to the NBA. He enters the league's threshold this summer. We'll see if the NBA is ready for him.
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