As if the largest second-half comeback in BYU history wasn’t impressive enough, go ahead and tack on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, too.

Sophomore guard Robert Wright III drained an off-balance 3 over two Clemson defenders at the horn, sealing No. 10 BYU’s come-from-behind 67-64 win over Clemson at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. The shot was the exclamation point of the Cougars’ comeback; they trailed 43-22 at halftime, allowing Clemson to head into intermission on a staggering 21-0 run.

ROB WRIGHT WINS IT AT THE BUZZER 😱🚨@BYUMBB COMES ALL THE WAY BACK 🔥 pic.twitter.com/p9D3vwvGO8

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) December 10, 2025

Now, normally, the player who hits the game winner gets all the glory. And Wright certainly deserves plenty of it. But if not for freshman sensation AJ Dybantsa, who played his best half of college basketball yet, BYU (8-1) never would have had a last-second look to win the game.

It was a remarkable turnaround for Dybantsa — the No. 1 recruit in the 2025 class, and one of the front-runners to be the first pick in the 2026 NBA Draft — after a relatively lackluster first half. The 6-foot-9 forward only scored 6 first-half points, 5 of them in the first four minutes, while looking largely unimpressive against Clemson’s surge.

His second-half effort, though, couldn’t have been better. En route to career highs in points (28), rebounds (nine) and assists (six), Dybantsa scored or assisted on 34 of BYU’s 45 second-half points. Whether he was calling his own number, or carving Clemson’s defense as a distributor out of the middle pick-and-roll, Dybantsa more than showed why NBA executives have been drooling over his talent and potential impact for years now. His 22 points in the second half were more than Clemson had as a team (21).

Dybantsa extended his streak of 15-plus-point games to start his career to nine, the second-most all time among Big 12 players behind former Oklahoma guard Trae Young (26 games).

AYO @AJ_Dybantsa 🤯

📺 ESPN pic.twitter.com/DfcjDvBYQh

— BYU Men’s Basketball (@BYUMBB) December 10, 2025

Despite Dybantsa’s second-half dominance, Clemson (7-3) never rolled over or let BYU run away with the game. The Cougars retook a 55-54 lead with 3:17 to play — their first since it was 17-15 midway through the first half — only for Clemson, specifically guard Dillon Hunter, to deliver some clutch heroics of their own. Hunter canned a top-of-the-key 3 with 17 seconds left that brought Clemson back within 2, and after Wright missed the front end of a subsequent one-and-one, Hunter drove into the paint for a crafty layup off the glass with 5.5 seconds left that knotted the game at 64.

Then, after BYU coach Kevin Young had the Cougars advance the ball to midcourt before calling a timeout — controversially using 4.2 of the remaining 5.5 seconds left in a tie game — it appeared the back-and-forth thriller was headed to overtime.

Until Wright happened, that is, completing the Cougars’ stunning comeback.