Cougar town

Good morning! Hope you’re refreshed from your weekend. Let’s ignore football and the WNBA playoffs for a bit to think about the ever-closer college hoops season.

1. Beware Big 12: Don’t expect a BYU dropff

The Big 12 isn’t the place to try something new. The conference is too deep, too talented, and there’s rarely any breathing room.

Maybe BYU defies that a bit this season.

The Cougars did just fine during their Big 12 debut last season, going 23-11 overall and tied with Kansas for 5th in the league. Throw in a top 20 kenpom finish and it cemented them as a worthy Big 12 hoops program. (To say nothing of their football exploits.)

But that was under coach Mark Pope, who’s now at Kentucky. Can new coach Kevin Young — in his first time as a college head coach — maintain that momentum after losing five key players, including starters Spencer Johnson, Noah Waterman and super sub Jaxson Robinson, the team’s leading scorer?

Nobody doubts Young’s acumen. He was slated as a future NBA head coach because of his ability to work with players and spot talent. (And he may still be a future NBA coach.) But that college coaching demands are different than the NBA, which requires more oversight and less room for error.

“The biggest thing has been learning. I learn something new every day. Not that it is that much different from what I was doing before, but there are a lot of nuances, like the cadence of the calendar as it relates to workouts, recruiting, this and that, time off. How do you balance it all?” he told the Deseret News last month.

“That is something I was very comfortable with at my old job. So learning the cadence of the college calendar has been a big one. You know, the first couple of months, I felt like I was drowning. I was super busy. It didn’t feel like I could come up for air. It is slowing down a little bit now, starting to normalize a little bit.”

Young does have a few things working in his favor.

Like the backcourt of Dallin Hall, Trevin Knell and Richie Saunders. All three shoot better than 35% beyond the arc, are efficient, unselfish players, and are longtime (for the portal era) BYU players. Rutgers transfer Mawot Mag should cover some of the defensive gaps, while Fousseyni Traore is an underrated big man.

But perhaps the biggest plus is the player who’s the least well-known in college hoops circles: Egor Demin. (Well, Woj knows him.)

The 6-9 freshman is 18, but has played professionally in Spain for the last two seasons. As Rob Dauster and Jeff Goodman note in our Offseason Grades series, Demin is the type of player that creates issues for opponents because of his size and skillset.

The Cougars should be a formidable team in the tier right below the Big 12’s top 5 of Houston, Kansas, Iowa State, Baylor and Arizona. They’re always a tough out at home (the Marriott Center is 4,500 feet above sea level) and have plenty of depth and talent to make the NCAA tourney again.

The difference between a top tier Big 12 program and second tier? That’ll depend on how quickly Young adjusts to the challenges of the college game.

2. Alabama, Virginia, Cincy land impact commits + more news

Fall is for pumpkin flavors, football — and picking a college basketball program. And more than a dozen high Class of 2025 players did that over the last few days.

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