Kevin Young has BYU basketball in the biggest spotlight since Jimmer. Now the coach is ready for his March moment.

Provo • Tom Holmoe always keeps a running list. It can be scratched out on paper or just mapped in his head, but it’s ever-present, at the ready.

When you have a job to fill with a finite list of candidates, you must be prepared when the time comes. So on the second Thursday of April last year, when BYU basketball coach Mark Pope was 1,600 miles away finalizing a deal with Kentucky, the Cougars’ athletic director wasn’t worried.

He’d always said if Pope got the Kentucky job — bringing back its native son — it would mean BYU did its part. Pope had success, graduated to a higher level and BYU won plenty of games.

But as the news was delivered, Holmoe went looking for a replacement with a new criteria: Make sure the next guy wouldn’t leave for another college job. Or, more specifically, make sure he wouldn’t have to leave to win at the highest level anymore.

And the first name on Holmoe’s list fit the description.

“We talked to Kevin the same day [Pope left], the conversation started immediately,” associate athletic director Brian Santiago said.

BYU interviewed Kevin Young back in 2019, then just a young assistant on the Philadelphia 76ers. He wasn’t the right fit then, with the program still in West Coast Conference obscurity and Young still too early in his NBA tenure.

But with Pope gone, Young was 2024’s answer. BYU had leveled up to the Big 12, with deep NIL pockets to recruit the best players in the world. And Young had the NBA resume to command the attention of every recruit. He brought Devin Booker to the NBA Finals and had Kevin Durant and Chris Paul on speed dial.

The marriage seemed right, an elite recruiter paired with elite resources. BYU could win a title with that formula. So Holmoe flew to Phoenix to close the deal.

“Let’s take things to the next level,” Holmoe said the day he introduced Young.

Eleven months later, Holmoe was proven right. BYU sits at No. 17 in the country, signed the No. 1 recruit in 2025, and looks poised for its first deep run in March since 2011.

Yet, it wasn’t always as easy as top choice meets the moment. There were times it looked like BYU might miss March altogether.

‘They can punk BYU’

Walking back toward the locker room in Orlando this February, Young was once again frustrated. His team was losing to one of the worst clubs in the Big 12 and getting out-physicaled in every way.

It wasn’t for a lack of talent. In Young’s first month of the job, he retained star guard Dallin Hall and wingman Richie Saunders. He added a potential NBA lottery pick in Egor Demin and paired him with a 6-foot-9 sniper in Kanon Catchings. Former professional player Mihailo Boskovic came off the bench.

Off the court, Young was everything he was cracked up to be. His pitch to recruits was working so well he landed the potential No. 1 NBA draft pick AJ Dybantsa in a coup that even made ESPN’s First Take pause.

But the on-court product was struggling. BYU didn’t look like the aggressor and it’d been that way for some time. Young’s team started 1-3 in the Big 12 and then stumbled to 2-4. It got walloped by Houston so badly, it looked like the Cougars didn’t belong.

And here they were again, giving up 40 points in a half to UCF. Would all this talent miss the NCAA Tournament? So Young forgot about the tactics and delivered a message.

“People think they can punk BYU,” shooting guard Trevin Knell remembered him saying on ESPN.

Young took a more diplomatic approach to the retelling.

“The thing we tried to address, it was holding us back the most,” Young said.

BYU escaped UCF and lost its next two to Arizona and Cincinnati. But the groundwork was set for a run.

A month later, Young would sit doused in water in a celebratory locker room in Ames, Iowa, and deliver the opposite of the message.

“The tide is turning, you are not punking BYU anymore,” he told his team after beating the No. 10 team in the nation, Iowa State, 96-92.

But there was one more thing he had to do before the Cougars made their charge. It wasn’t there yet.

‘Wouldn’t have happened in the NBA’

In all his playoff battles in the NBA, masterminding the Suns offense as it went to the finals, Young kept trying to shrink the rotation.

“Play guys 42 minutes, with seven [players],” Young told reporters recently.

But as he tried to force it in college, it wasn’t working. Two of his best defensive players were sitting idle on the bench. His star shooting guard was barely getting shots. His offensive minded big man was out of the rotation completely.

And with BYU losing badly to Cincinnati in the middle of February, Young decided to throw out as many lineup combinations as possible. He put in senior guard Trey Stewart and Boskovic — who’d barely played in conference. Boskovic banged two threes and Stewart added nine minutes. Eleven players played significant roles.

BYU lost by almost 20, but Young saw something in an extended rotation.

He’d been mulling it over for the better part of the last month. Parts of his system were working. Saunders became an all-league player, relentlessly attacking closeouts or rising up for quick threes. Demin was settling in as a distributor.

Still, there were nights when BYU looked stagnant on both sides of the ball, and Young wanted to tweak it.

On defense, Young liked to switch, one through four. He kept his center anchored in coverage. But increasingly in practice, he saw fifth-year senior Mawot Mag locking down ball handlers without help.

So he made the switch, inserting Mag into the starting lineup and benching Catchings. He allowed Mag free range on defense and told Catchings to hunt shots with the second unit.

At the same time, he needed more versatility in the front court. With the array of defenses BYU was seeing, he wanted to swap out a low post threat with a rolling big. Sometimes the defense called for a center who could pop out and pass.

It led Young to an 11-man rotation. He would play three different centers every night to counter defensive looks. He changed the defensive scheme to allow for one guard to shadow the other team’s best player, without switching. Often that was Mag, but he included Stewart in the rotation — another athletic defender — to spell Mag.

Young thought if he added these players into the fold, it would pair nicely with his mainstays in the rotation.

He was right.

After Cincinnati, BYU ripped off nine straight wins. It pummeled Kansas by 34, beat Arizona on the road and handed Iowa State a rare loss at home. In the Big 12 tournament, it gradually wore down the Cyclones with a 10-man rotation.

Four top-25 teams went down. It was the best stretch of BYU basketball in a decade.

“Definitely wouldn’t have happened in the NBA,” Young said, knowing his rotation was unconventional.

BYU was ready for March.

Best since Jimmer?

Young sat in front of CBS cameras as the Selection Show rolled on last weekend. BYU’s name popped up early, sliding in as a six-seed against VCU in Denver.

He shook his players hands and explained how it was, “surreal.” The Cougars are poised with a winnable region, a real path to the Sweet 16 — a place they haven’t been since Jimmer Fredette was roaming around Provo.

The marriage Holmoe dreamed of when he scribbled Young’s name on his list didn’t always seem destined to work. But now, Young has BYU in its biggest spotlight in 15 years.

He’s not shying away from the expectations, either. He’s ready for his moment.

“I welcome it,” Young said. “That is the whole point, is to have postseason success. That is what you want, so I welcome it head on.”

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