photo by: Chance Parker/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas coach Nate Lie directs his team against West Virginia on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025 at Rock Chalk Park.

The Big 12 soccer tournament has demonstrated to this point the fundamental irrelevance of regular-season results when it comes time for the postseason.

Baylor, which lost 1-0 to Texas Tech at home on Sept. 19, beat the Red Raiders in penalties on Monday, only to fall two days later in resounding fashion to BYU, a team it had beaten on Oct. 10.

West Virginia held Kansas to a draw at Rock Chalk Park on Oct. 16 and come tournament time lost to the Jayhawks 4-0. Colorado had beaten KU 2-1 on the Jayhawks’ senior night and changed its team’s shape for a rematch six days later, only to find itself on the other end of a 2-1 result on Wednesday.

The other two tournament matches were first-time contests between the teams involved. All that is to say that not a single game during this year’s Big 12 Championship has gone the same way as a regular-season matchup between the same teams.

KU will be hoping to reverse that trend on Saturday night when it faces BYU at 7 p.m. at Betty Lou Mays Soccer Field in Waco, Texas. The two bottom seeds in the competition made it to the tournament final, and the Cougars will be looking to avenge their 3-1 loss at South Field on Oct. 23.

That game saw the opportunistic Jayhawks jump ahead early with three goals in the first 24 minutes, then hold on in the second half against the Cougars’ onslaught when BYU became “as dynamic of a team as I’ve ever seen,” as KU coach Nate Lie put it afterward.

Ellie Walbruch scored the Cougars’ lone goal on that day, and that’s nothing unusual for BYU, as she is another of the league’s most prolific forwards (along with Hope Leyba of Colorado, whom the Jayhawks just held scoreless) and has 15 goals on the year. She has netted two apiece in each of the Cougars’ Big 12 tournament games.

Midfielder Lucy Kesler (first team) and defenders Presley Freeman and Izzi Stratton (second team) earned all-league honors for the year along with Walbruch (first team), and the youthful Cougars also got a couple of first-year players on the all-freshman team.

It is indeed quite a young group of players, as BYU has just two seniors on the roster, only one of whom has played this season. The Cougars, who actually had a losing record in conference play at 4-5-2, emerged from a crowded group of teams to claim the Big 12 tournament’s final seed on the regular season’s final day.

That’s not the usual position in which the program finds itself. BYU’s 31st-year head coach Jennifer Rockwood has led the team for its entire existence and has reached the NCAA Tournament on 23 occasions. In 2021, the Cougars lost in penalties in the national championship; in 2023, they reached the semifinal round.

Both KU and BYU at this point are securely in the field for the 2025 edition of the NCAA Tournament. The Jayhawks do have a lot to play for on Saturday. Besides the opportunity to defend their Big 12 title from 2024, they could with one more win effectively lock down a top-two tournament seed and therefore the opportunity to host as many as three NCAA Tournament matches at Rock Chalk Park.