This morning, the nation’s top basketball recruit, AJ Dybantsa, appeared on First Take to announce where he will play his single year of college basketball before entering the NBA Draft. He had publicly narrowed his options down to 4 schools, and the first three were big names you might expect; traditional basketball powerhouses Kansas, North Carolina, and Alabama were all there contending for his talents. But the fourth logo is one you may not have expected to see at the table: Brigham Young University.
Expected or not, BYU was solidly in the mix, and when the time came AJ Dybantsa unzipped his jacket and revealed the Royal Blue of BYU to be his colors for the 2025-26 CBB season, tipping the scales of power away from the blue bloods out east and towards a little school in Provo, Utah. But how did we get here?
Brigham Young University
In any discussion of BYU athletics, inevitably the unique type of institution that BYU is enters into the conversation. Brigham Young University is the flagship university of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (sometimes referred to as Mormons), and was founded in 1875 by then church leader Brigham Young. Nestled in the Wasatch mountains, the university is home to about 35 thousand students in any given year, Latter-Day Saint or otherwise. Apart from the normal curriculum required for a Computer Science, Nursing, or Tuba Performance degree, all students are required to take several courses about religion. These can range from courses teaching about the doctrine and history of the Latter-Day Saint Church, to classes on Judaism and Islam. Additionally, each Tuesday students and members of the public alike are invited to attend Devotionals and Forums hosted at the Marriott Center, helping to enrich the faith-based education that BYU strives to provide.
As part of this education students agree to abide by an Honor Code. Some of the tenets of the Honor Code include being an upstanding and honest citizen, while other, more publicly controversial tenets ask that students and faculty adhere to standards of the Latter-Day Saint religion while at BYU. These include things such as abstaining from drinking alcohol and coffee, as well as avoiding sexual relations unless it is with someone you are married to. All of which seems like it may dissuade a college aged kid from attending, especially one who wants to party and “experience life”. And because of this BYU is portrayed by many to be as difficult as the military academies to recruit players to, and for many years this has likely been the case. That does not mean however that BYU has not seen its own share of athletic success.
BYU Sports: Defying the Odds
For decades BYU sports was a bit of a sideshow. Typically a bottom team in the prestigious Skyline Conference in most sports, there wasn’t much attention being paid to the guys and gals from Provo. Despite a pair of Basketball NIT championships in the 50s and 60s, Brigham Young wasn’t exactly a name you would have seen in an old sports film. However things started to look up in the Western Athletic Conference. Once one of the worst football programs in Division I, head coach Lavell Edwards led the football team to 19 conference championships, 1 national championship, and a slew of upsets which raised the profile of the university. Leading the charge to make BYU relevant in Football was a slew of record setting quarterbacks, names such as Jim McMahon, Steve Young, Robbie Bosco, and Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer. And all of these accolades would lead to BYU gaining the perception of being a Football school. This sudden unprecedented success did not mean that basketball wasn’t starting to up its game as well.
BYU Basketball: Unexpected Stars
While Lavell Edwards and Jim McMahon stunned the country by upsetting SMU in the Holiday Bowl, another star at BYU was lighting it up on the hardwood. Danny Ainge, a three sport high school star chose to attend BYU to pursue his basketball dreams, while also part timing for the Toronto Blue Jays in the summer. In the 1981 NCAA tournament, he led the team to the Elite Eight, the farthest BYU has ever gotten in March Madness, and in the same season received the Wooden Award as the best player in the country. Ainge would go on to the NBA and be a two time champion for the Boston Celtics, and BYU basketball would fade back into obscurity for many years.
A bit of life would return to the program when one of the top recruits in the country, Shawn Bradley would elect to play for BYU. He had a phenomenal freshman season, after which he elected to serve a two year church mission in Australia, and then enter the NBA draft. And although he went on to have a successful career and even appear in Space Jam, the BYU basketball program returned to irrelevance, winning only a single NCAA tournament game from 1992 to 2009.
Jimmermania
BYU Basketball would come screaming back to the national consciousness behind the talents of an under recruited, under-sized guard named Jimmer Fredette. Much like Steph Curry a few years before him (and many years after in the NBA), Jimmer dazzled the nation with long range shooting and scoring rarely seen at any level. In 2011 he led the Cougars to the Sweet Sixteen, and was unanimously named the nations best player across a slew of awards. He was a pop culture sensation, with “Jimmered” becoming a verb and “Teach Me How to Jimmer” hitting YouTube. And although he didn’t pan out in the NBA, this author will always remember watching him play and credits Jimmer with a life long love of Basketball and especially 3 point shooting.
Despite the national attention afforded by Jimmer and some good players having come through since, the team has struggled to even match the Sweet Sixteen run in 2011, having only won 2 NCAA Tournament games after Fredette went to the NBA and none since 2014. So how does a team that has had no national success to speak of in over a decade suddenly landing the number one recruit in the country?
In my opinion there are three main factors that contributed to BYU being able to pull off this coup
The Big XII factor
After Jimmer left for the NBA in 2011, most BYU sports moved from the Mountain West Conference to the West Coast Conference. BYU football went independent in a move to seek eventual admission into a Power league, and thus begun a decade long journey for BYU to find a new home. Basketball saw some success, with occasional upsets over national power house Gonzaga in conference play, but earned no conference titles and as mentioned before zero tournament success while in the WCC. When BYU was announced to join the Big XII in 2021, it was assumed that recent football success was the main driver, and that a team that had struggled in the WCC would take an even further step back entering Big XII play. In fact, the Big XII was and is considered a top two Men’s Basketball conference in the country, housing powerhouses such as Kansas, Iowa State, Texas Tech, Baylor, and fellow addition Houston. It would have been more than expected for BYU to finish in the bottom half of the big 12 after a 19-15 season in the WCC.
However, the Cougars actually improved their overall record, finishing 23-11 and 5th in the Big XII, including an upset win against Kansas at Allen Field House. Not only did the increased level of play not deter the team, it seemed to drive them to be even better. Despite once again being bounced from tournament play in the first round, it seemed like the team was set up for a good following season with most players maintaining at least another year of eligibility, and some high level recruits being lined up to join the team for the 2024-25 season.
That all seemingly changed when a massive coaching carousel began that altered the long held landscape of college basketball. As part of this set of coaching moves, John Calipari, longtime coach of Kentucky basketball, decided to take a new job as Arkansas’ Head Coach, and in turn that meant that BYU Head Coach and UK alum Mark Pope was hired at Kentucky. BYU fans saw their newfound basketball success seemingly crumble before their eyes, as their Head Coach left to coach a Blue Blood, several key players hit the portal, and the highest rated recruit to that point in program history followed Pope to his new job. It seemed a dark day for BYU Basketball.
KYU
Many fans were not hopeful that BYU would be able to find a suitable replacement for Pope, as in addition to the Honor Code Requirements, BYU requires all of its head coaches to be of the Latter-Day Saint Faith, which greatly restricts the pool of candidates. BYU also had spent decades as a mid-major program with a minor budget for athletics, so many assumed they would search for a small time assistant or coach and hire them to take over. In fact Mark Pope had previously been head coach of Utah Valley University, a commuter school just a few miles away from BYU.
However BYU made a bold and decisive hire, opting not for an assistant from the college ranks, but from the NBA! Enter Kevin Young, long time assistant for the 76ers and Suns, and associate head coach in Phoenix for several years. Young interviewed for the Head Coaching job at any NBA franchises, and was assumed by many at that level to be next man up when the right opportunity opened. However, the sky opened in Provo, Utah, and BYUs donors ponied up to reportedly make him a top paid head coach in college basketball. BYU was not going to go away quietly.
Before he even got to Provo full time, Kevin Young got to assembling a staff full of some of the best coaches and trainers from around the NBA, including nutritionists, strength coaches, assistants, and more. He made it his mission from day one to make BYU “the best place in college basketball to prepare young men to play in the NBA”. He sold not only his NBA experience coaching Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, but also the BYU Honor Code. He flipped that whole dilemma on its head, telling recruits that BYU was a place they could come to hone their craft with no distractions, and then enter the league with the best possible preparation.
And so far that sales pitch seems to have worked. In his first off-season as BYU head coach, Kevin Young lured top international prospect Egor Demin to BYU, as well as American talent Kanon Catchings and several other key pieces both through the transfer portal and as freshmen. He also managed to retain many of BYU’s key players from the 2023-24 season after they had entered the portal and considered following Pope to UK. As Devin Booker termed it, “KYU” seems to be coming in to full swing. Whether this will lead to on court success is still to be determined, but the off the court results seem to be leading BYU towards a bright future in Basketball.
Name, Image, and Likeness
In addition to the conference affiliation and Head Coach, one piece that was always going to be key in the recruitment of a player as touted as AJ Dybantsa was the money. Ever since Congress threw open the doors for college athletes to earn money, schools have turned recruiting into a de facto bidding war. Highly talented players in all sports have received payouts of over a million dollars and in some cases upwards of ten million dollars for their commitment to a school. And while nominally these deals are for merchandise and advertising appearances, they are starting to become a huge piece of the puzzle, with players threatening to enter the portal if they don’t get what they are worth.
AJ Dybantsa is no exception to this trend. Already having deals signed with Red Bull and Nike, he was set to receive a record deal wherever he went. And as the likely number one pick in 2026, that eye watering amount will become even more wild as that is for one year of play in college, likely a blip over his career. Most expected the likes of Alabama and UNC to be able to pony up this cash, so how did BYU hang in this race with those goliaths?
Donor Power
Many schools athletic departments have been floated by donors for as long as they have existed. Some that come to mind are Phil Knight at Oregon and Boone Pickens at Oklahoma State. But donors have new ways in which they can contribute to the success of a program beyond direct donations, and that is in funding NIL deals for players to come to their Alma Mater.
We saw it a few weeks ago with Michigan donors putting together a 10 million dollar NIL deal to flip a top Quarterback from LSU. And again with BYU it appears that the donors have put forward the cash. Many have assumed that Ryan Smith, owner of the Utah Jazz and Hockey Club, ponied up most of the money necessary to get AJ in Royal Blue. There are however a slew of millionaires and billionaires who attended BYU and regularly donate, including the Marriott family that the hotel chain is named after, as well as the Business school and Basketball Arena at BYU.
Even if the number is nowhere near as high as has been reported, little old BYU and it’s donors were able to put together a deal that beat out the likes of Kansas and UNC, who both have won national championships in recent memory. In the end, AJ decided that Kevin Young, BYU, and the Big XII would be the place where he would take his next step in his growth as a basketball player.
There was a time 5 or so years ago that I thought BYU would never make a serious investment into athletics, and that the university would be content staying a moderate success forever. It turns out that I was wrong, and the buy in from the donors as a result of the big xii move and new coaching hires has been incredible. It’s an exciting time in Provo, and I can’t wait to see AJ Dybantsa in cougar blue.
