Myron MedcalfNov 14, 2025, 07:15 AM ETCloseMyron Medcalf covers college basketball for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2011.Follow on X
AJ Dybantsa throws down putback slam (0:17)AJ Dybantsa throws down putback slam (0:17)
The former Phoenix Suns assistant has worked with the likes of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Chris Paul. He has seen his fair share of NBA superstars make “SportsCenter”-worthy plays. But when five-star wing AJ Dybantsa — ESPN’s No. 1 recruit in the 2025 class — rose above the rim and slammed over a couple of his teammates in a recent practice for Young’s BYU Cougars, the coach didn’t know how to react.
“He had a dunk last week, and it was insane,” Young said. “I mean, I’ve been doing this a long time. It was a top-three in-person dunk that I’ve ever seen. The first time he does that in the Marriott Center, we might have to stop the game.”
Provo isn’t exactly the setting Dybantsa had envisioned starring in when his recruitment began. He had always imagined himself playing for a blue blood; North Carolina and Kansas both were finalists on his list. But a visit to BYU — a team that has never reached the Final Four and hasn’t sent a player to the NBA in 15 years — changed everything.
“We want AJ! We want AJ!” chants reverberated from the thousands of Cougars fans who filled the stands of a BYU football game on that October 2024 visit. The passionate response — coupled with Young’s NBA-like system and operation — made Dybantsa feel as if he had found his school.
A reportedly high seven-figure payment didn’t hurt, either. But Dybantsa and his family say he didn’t pick the Cougars simply for the money.
With his sights set on being the potential No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA draft, the trek to BYU is the next stage in his development — even in a season with one of the strongest freshman classes in recent memory, featuring stars at traditional basketball powerhouses such as his two primary challengers for that top overall spot: Darryn Peterson at Kansas and Cameron Boozer at Duke.
But with the Cougars, Dybantsa also has an opportunity to do what Jimmer Fredette did 15 years ago — earn a place in both BYU and college basketball lore.
A year after a Sweet 16 run behind the country’s best offense, Dybantsa’s arrival could give Provo a spot on the sport’s map once thought unimaginable for a school tucked away in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.
“We’re hoping to get to the Final Four … and then play in the national championship game,” Dybantsa said. “We don’t want anything else. It’s nothing short of that.”
Sure enough, when Dybantsa arrived, Young sold him on the ways BYU modeled itself after an NBA team — with real NBA professionals.
That meticulous approach appealed to Dybantsa, who wanted the perspective that Young’s love for analytics has produced. When Dybantsa missed a 3-pointer at a September practice, Akash Sebastian, BYU’s director of analytics and strategy, knew which point on the rim the ball had clanked, the trajectory of the shot as it left Dybantsa’s hands and his exact location on the court when he released it.
The data helps Dybantsa understand where on the court he’s most likely to help himself and his team.
“Higher percentage points win, higher percentage shots win,” Dybantsa said. “So for me, being able to take those and create those and generate those higher percentage shots — if it’s me shooting or somebody else shooting based off of [the defenders I attract] — the more games we’re going to win. I had never thought of the game like that.”
That’s why Sebastian was arguably Young’s secret weapon in the recruitment of Dybantsa, who wanted his stint in college to resemble a year with an NBA team. Sebastian used to sleep through his classes in India during his childhood after he would stay up all night to watch NBA games in the United States. Later, his love for analytics helped him land a job with the Suns, where he met Young.
Today, he puts sensors on every Cougars player in practice, and with the help of a smart ball and shot-detecting technology, he tracks every field goal attempt down to the degree from which the ball comes off a player’s fingertips — something the NBA is testing but is already standardized at BYU.
There is only one problem with these technological advancements: The batteries in those balls don’t last forever.
“It’s funny because in the middle of practice sometimes one of our guys will be like, ‘Hey, the ball is out of charge. We’ve got to switch it out,'” Sebastian said. “The ball is out of charge? Where have you ever heard of that?”
After practices, Sebastian gathers all of the information he has compiled and sends it to Dybantsa and other players.
“How often are our guys shooting? How often are they passing? How often are they driving? How often are they doing nothing? Which is what you really don’t want them to do,” Sebastian said. “You want them to maintain the advantage that they’ve created, so we’re all over all of that stuff and we track it all.”
Beyond the numbers, Young has empowered a strength and conditioning staff that’s led by Michael Davie, who previously worked with Giannis Antetokounmpo as an assistant strength coach with the Milwaukee Bucks. Though it’s clear Dybantsa is a unique athlete, Davie has the numbers to prove it.
Although he continues to work on his upper-body strength, Dybantsa has a set of characteristics few athletes at the next level can match, Davie said.
DURANT OFFERED Dybantsa another critical piece of advice: to become hyperfocused on his goals. And it quickly became clear that BYU is uniquely suited for that type of locked-in experience.
A recent weeknight on campus was quiet, the norm in a place that’s not packed with bars or an abundance of loud parties, and a reflection of the limitations the school’s honor code places on students to not engage in activities such as drinking alcohol.
Of course, all that means is Dybantsa stands out on this campus. And if anyone can relate to what’s ahead for Dybantsa in Provo, it’s Fredette.
During his prime at BYU nearly 15 years ago, the former national player of the year could move around campus only quietly. The school’s enraptured basketball fans swarmed him everywhere he went — even on the road, with a group once waiting for the team plane in subzero temperatures in Wyoming.
“I was a senior and I was just walking around,” Fredette told ESPN. “I wasn’t even walking around campus. I was walking around Provo and some kid just came up to me out of nowhere and just popped up, and he’s like a huge fan and he said, ‘I love what you do.’
“He pulled something out of his backpack and it was a really old pair of shoes. He said, ‘I just want to let you know that I saw you throw these away when you were a freshman, so I went into the dumpster and grabbed them, and I held onto them forever until I could get you to sign them. These are your shoes.’
And when Fredette met the highly touted prospect for the first time recently, he told him that he wanted him to enjoy the college experience — and the chaos that might come with it.
“I told him his life is going to change,” Fredette said. “There is going to be a time where it’s going to be difficult, if it’s not already, just to walk around Provo on campus. … But I told him to just enjoy it. The people are great. They’re really nice. Get to know the people, try to embrace them and the culture and the fans and if you can do that, they’re obviously going to continue to show love, and they’ll show you love for the rest of your life.”
Dybantsa occasionally rides to class in a golf cart like some of his teammates do, but he mostly acts like a regular student at BYU with the exception of a few autograph requests. At the start of the semester, he was walking to class when a fan wearing his BYU jersey stopped him in the middle of a walkway and asked him to sign it. For now, Dybantsa obliges as he tries to blend in with the rest of the student body.
“I really try not to say no, though. I try not to,” he said. “I know some of these stories of people saying no to autograph requests. I don’t want to be the one to say no. Sometimes, if I have to get somewhere, I’ll keep walking, but I don’t want to say no.”
Young recently called Duke staffers to ask how they handled Cooper Flagg’s lone season with the Blue Devils a year ago since Dybantsa is a superstar already on campus. And that popularity demands some precautions.
Brian Santiago, the school’s new athletic director, was an administrator during Fredette’s time with the school. That experience — “they would track our planes,” he said — helped prepare the university for Dybantsa’s arrival.
IN A ONCE-IN-A-GENERATION moment, BYU men’s basketball will be fueled by a freshman who might be the best player in America. But he probably won’t be there for long — the clock is ticking on the program’s push to help him reach his goals and also help the team achieve its own ambitions.
“If he can do those three things, I think it would be really hard to not take him at No. 1 given his size and all the intangible things he has as well.”
Dybantsa isn’t the only star on the roster. Richie Saunders, an All-Big 12 selection last season, and Robert Wright III have the potential to earn national acclaim alongside Dybantsa.
The talent pool is what Young envisioned when he left the Suns for BYU in April 2024, asking the school both for an abundance of resources to build his team, but also the opportunity to construct the team his way.
“In order to win, you’ve got to bring in high-end talent,” Young said. “I think we’ve done a decent job of getting guys from different walks of life, different talent levels, and have it all sort of come together, so it has been received well. … Frankly, we needed to get longer, more athletic, more dogs, honestly.”
The Cougars now have a backcourt that no team in America can match. With Saunders (43% from 3 in 2024-25), Wright (4.2 APG in 2025-25) and Dybantsa, they have the anchors to propel a team that owned the nation’s most efficient offense in the final three months of last season.