{"id":467897,"date":"2025-12-24T01:59:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T01:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/467897\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T01:59:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T01:59:12","slug":"no-12-byu-will-be-without-star-rb-lj-martin-in-pop-tarts-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/467897\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 12 BYU will be without star RB LJ Martin in Pop-Tarts Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 No. 12 BYU will be without one of its biggest stars for Saturday’s Pop-Tarts Bowl<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Head coach Kalani Sitake confirmed before Tuesday’s practice in Orlando that the junior tailback will miss the bowl game after having surgery.<\/p>\n

The Cougars released a bowl-week depth chart that lists Enoch Nawahine, Jovesa Damuni and Preston Rex as co-starters at running back. Of the three, Damuni has the most rushing yardage in 2025 with 63 yards, while Nawahine, a fifth-year senior, has 51 yards on 15 carries in nine games.<\/p>\n

Rex, the younger brother of former BYU tight end Isaac Rex, ran for 33 yards on 13 carries in 11 games after making the switch from safety.<\/p>\n

“We’re going to have to lean on some of the young guys,” Sitake said. “Obviously, we have great depth on the team with LJ not being able to play this game.”<\/p>\n

Martin’s absence is notable, as the Cougars’ leading rusher in both 2023 and 2024 was key to the offense. The Big 12 offensive player of the year<\/a> by both league coaches and a panel of Associated Press voters totaled 1,305 yards and 12 touchdowns in 13 games as a junior, bringing his three-year total to 2,541 yards and 23 touchdowns.<\/p>\n

The decision to have surgery isn’t necessarily a sign of Martin’s future, Sitake noted. The junior is still debating whether to return to BYU for his final year of eligibility or enter the NFL draft in April.<\/p>\n

Martin went through senior-day exercises during the Cougars’ regular-season finale against UCF, though he said multiple times since then that his decision wouldn’t come until after the bowl game.<\/p>\n

Sitake added that the bowl timeline, as well as preseason activities such as pre-draft workouts and spring football, left a “small window” to have surgery and return for his senior season or his rookie NFL campaign.<\/p>\n

“He’s been with us the entire time in the practices,” Sitake added of Martin. “He’s recovering at home right now, but he’ll be back to watch these guys and cheer on his brothers on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“We’re going to have to rely on some depth in the running back room. But for the most part, we should have a lot of guys.”<\/p>\n

BYU will face No. 22 Georgia Tech in the Pop-Tarts Bowl on Saturday (1:30 p.m. MST, ABC).<\/p>\n

\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 No. 12 BYU will be without one of its biggest stars for Saturday’s Pop-Tarts Bowl.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":467898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[419,418,171,1318,210,421,420,425,1317,1315,1316,50,422,423,62,399,314,67,132,68,424,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-467897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-classifieds","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-homes","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-ncaa","17":"tag-ncaa-football","18":"tag-ncaafootball","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-radio","21":"tag-salt-lake","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-television","24":"tag-traffic","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-utah","29":"tag-weather"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}