On Saturday night, BYU basketball dominated Cincinnati to improve to 4-4 in conference play. The Cougars shot lights out from three against one of the best defenses in the country, all while playing stifling defense. BYU outscored Cincinnati 52-29 in the second half on their way to a 80-52 victory.

After the game, BYU jumped up from no. 39 in the KenPom rankings to no. 31.

KenPom is intended to be a predictive analytic, so the predictive model will adjust when a team outperforms or underperforms the model’s expectation. KenPom predicted a 70-65 BYU win before the game. BYU wildly outperformed KenPom’s expectation, so the model adjusted accordingly.

The model is starting to match what our eyes are seeing: this BYU basketball team is getting better and better as the season progresses. The predictive metrics are starting to reflect that.

This BYU basketball team is only starting to scratch the surface of its potential. Richie Saunders is proving to be a bonafide star as a scorer, and Egor Demin is starting to get back into a rhthym on offense.

True freshman Kanon Catchings played his best game in conference play against Cincinnati. If those two freshmen can play closer to their potential, BYU suddenly becomes a very hard team to beat.

Most notable, at least in the opinion of this author, is the development of the new starting lineup. Kevin Young may have found something with the starting lineup of Egor Demin, Richie Saunders, Mawot Mag, Keba Keita, and Trevin Knell. For the second consecutive game, that lineup dominated the start of the second half and BYU never looked back.

It took a while for this BYU basketball team to click, but if the last two games are any indication, they may have just hit their stride.

It comes at a critical point in the schedule for BYU. The next five games will likely determine whether BYU gets into the March Madness field or not. The Cougars play five games with win probabilities between 42%-60%. A winning record in those five games would likely position BYU to get an NCAA Tournament bid.

The critical five-game stretch tips off on Tuesday with a home game against Baylor.