BYU Basketball head coach Kevin Young discussed his team, which enters the 2025-26 season ranked No. 8 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll, at Big 12 Media Day in Kansas City, Missouri.
I’m somewhat of a collaboration I think with the school and with our communication department. Uh I mean I I think they’re you know the three headliners call it for what it is. You know probably our three best players and you know I’m sure people want to hear what they have to say. Kevin with the uh the way the never had to be the rules are different how you play exhibition game. What do you think? What was your mentality kind of going into how you did it this year? What do you think that how it prepares your guys? Um, well, last year we played uh a friend of mine uh who’s the head coach of Colorado Christian and we played Boise State in a like a secret scrimmage or whatever they’re called nowadays. Um, I mean this year we wanted to just across the board just have a little steeper competition. You know, the Boise game was good last year. I think opening it up to like fans, making it feel a little bit more real. Unfortunately, this year we were super banged up on our first one. So, we didn’t get a we learned some, but we didn’t learn what we really wanted to learn. Um, but I think in general, honestly, I wish we could just I wish we it was more like the NBA. I hate practicing for eight straight months. It feel I guess it’s four or five straight months where you’re just going against each other just in talking to a lot of the coaches. I think you get your own guys banged up, you know? I I I wish we could play more just so you you you get different looks, different bodies, and things like that. So, I’m I’m in favor of them. I like them. And uh hopefully in the future we can get more. What’s the rhino? Um I don’t know. I I’ll be I don’t know a lot of stuff about college basketball. I’m learn like even that every like this was different than it was last year. So I I would be lying to you if I said we had some like great formula. It was like, hey, good team wants to play us. Let’s play them. And so I don’t know if I had to just take a first stab at it. I don’t know. Could you do four? You know, could you do four? That would feel I’d feel better than practicing against each other every single day, I think. What’s What’s something in college basketball you like more in this sport than you did in the NBA? Well, the NBA is really hard because of just how many games there are, you know? I think it waters down health. I think it waters down the product and but it also makes it a war of attrition, you know, which I I think is like it’s hard to it’s very different than college. The best teams win in the NBA, right? like you’re not sneaking up on any one of the seven game series. The best team is going to win. And so I do like the fact that we have less games. Um I think it it makes every game more meaningful. You know, I think I’m a huge football guy. Like football is awesome because especially really in in the NFL and in college, I mean, every game is a huge game, right? And I think that that’s similar in college basketball. And I like that. Kevin, there’s if if you looked at all the high major leagues this year, there’s going to be about 65 to 70% starting lineup like newcomers. You don’t see that kind of turnover. What do you think of fresh the amount of turnover that’s happening in college basketball? Um, honestly, man, I don’t I don’t mind it. It is what it is. Like I mean and I’m we all have our own journeys, right? I mean I was a minor league coach for 9 years. I mean I get new guys every every 5 days and this was before two-way contracts. I remember and I won’t bore you guys with old stories, but we were in Erie, Pennsylvania and Tommy Shepard, the GM of the Wizards at the time called me. He was like, “Hey, we’re calling up uh I forget who it was. Your best player, by the way, averages 25 points a game. Dude’s gone. I got to go play a game that night.” Right. So, I honestly I’ve been used to like peacemailing groups of teams together. Is it ideal? No. It changes how you coach. You have I think you have to do less. I think you have to be um I think you just have you can’t overwhelm the players because you don’t have years and years and years to to build all the the continuity and so forth. And so, it’s like kind of an adapt or die type of mentality. And until the rules change, I don’t I don’t think it’s going to be any different. So, you got to figure it out, which I think everyone’s trying to do. Kevin, with North Carolina coming in Friday, uh, another exhibition, do you want kind of the same approach that you had with Nebraska or will the approach change at all? What are you trying to get out of this? Yeah, I mean, it’s going to depend on health really for us. I mean, Rob Wright was on a minute restriction in that game, so I chose to only play the starters together, which in a real game, I would never do that. Um, so it’s really going to depend on health and uh, but again, you only get two of them, right? So you gota what’s most important for us will be to try to I think sub it the way I would more of a normal game, but depending on the bill of health with not just Rob, we had three other guys that were completely out of that game. It’s that’s what it’s really going to depend upon. Is any of those guys serious or is there any concern? Um I so we have uh we have at the moment I think we have four guys that are that are out like uh two of them are not anything that we’re overly concerned about. Two of them are stuff that we’re we’re monitoring and and uh the guys aren’t coming back tomorrow in that case. What were some key fascin? Well, once we got AJ committed and we knew he was coming, we want we pushed pause on all of our recruiting, uh we pretty much stopped recruiting uh any other high school player. I don’t remember the timeline. Zavon was someone that we we felt good about. But uh everybody else we kind of paused on, including like really really good players in terms of fivestar guys, international guys, but they were young. So we we wanted to prioritize, you know, veterans. We want to prioritize shooting. We want to prioritize perimeter defense. And so that was kind of if you look at the guys we brought in, you know, Tyler Mus second most made threes in Big Sky. You know, Canard Davis is I think has a chance to be one of the best kind of 3 andd guys in the country this year. You know, Nate Pickkins is in that same ilk. You know, Rob, you know, Rob is an experienced guy that we felt we needed at the at the kind of head of the snake type thing to guide our group once he was in the portal. So, that’s kind of how that went down. you guys had a plan with with the portal. Do do you almost like have a staff where you’re kind of monitoring, you know, other rosters in in the country to see players if they do hit the portal, you guys are ready at the moment that that they do hit. Yeah, I mean, you guys have heard those that follow our program closely. I mean, we we really do try to operate like an NBA franchise. Not saying that’s right, it’s just what I know and it’s what I’m comfortable with. Just so happens that what I’m doing now in college is a lot more like the NBA. And so yeah, I mean we we have essentially a front office staff, you know, we have now I hopefully the rules change where that front office staff just like the NBA can go out and like actually live scout recruits and so forth. You can’t do that at the moment. Um but yeah, I mean we’re pretty we’re pretty organized. We try to be anyway with with staying on top of stuff. We not a whole lot of things. We try to not have a whole lot of things sneak up on us. You know, even even now with with rules of guys playing in the G- League now all of a sudden maybe could could come play in colleges. So we we and if you look at my staff, you know, we have a lot of backgrounds that can cover a lot of different areas and I think that is a strength of our of our group. You haven’t ever shied away from expectations from the minute you stepped in. Even this year they’re even higher than last year. Are you still kind of leaning into that? And is there some people are saying final four or bust? Is that is that where you’re at? No, not at all. I mean, I I want our guys to have a great practice tomorrow, right? I want us to come in and get better from whatever film I show tomorrow and then come back the next day and do the same thing. I know it sounds really cliche and coachy. That’s how I live my life. That’s how I’ve always coached. And I think that’s the only way you can really get better. The good thing for us is we have we have guys in our program that, you know, it wasn’t all peaches and cream last year. We had to pound the rock. We had to stack day after day after day. And Richie knows that. Ca knows that. Dawson knows it. Miylo knows it. Jared McGregor knows it. All my coaches know it. Um, and they’re helping the new guys understand that’s how we operate. I don’t care if we’re picked dead last, first, doesn’t matter. That’s how we do it. And I’ve made that very clear to our players. Coach, as someone who’s coached from GLeague NBA, you mentioned how, you know, we it’s been in the headlines now G League player coming to the pair back to NCAA. Does that does that rule make sense to you? I I guess some coaches seem confused by it or don’t agree with it. Um, it makes tons of sense to me because it’s the exact same thing as the European players. I don’t think that like it’s literally the exact same thing. Yeah. Like the Now look, if you’re a NBA guy that’s on a an NBA contract, I mean, the G-League is no different than the Euro League. It’s not the NBA. It’s right. It’s just not. Now, if you’re on a two-way contract and you’re on NBA contract, you’re an NBA player. If you’re not, what’s the difference of a guy coming from all these European clubs? So, it’s the same thing. So, I’m I’m a lot of things that make sense don’t actually happen for me. This actually does make sense. Now, if you want to strip away both sets of it, okay, great. But that’s how kind of how I see it. Yeah. You mentioned Rob. He gives his kind of unofficial debut. I guess the first time you see out of him that either surprised you or maybe validated kind of the reason why you guys went and got him out of the tournament. Um, I don’t think anything surprised me. I’m validated. Yes, for sure. I mean, you know, I think it’s I in several areas. Number one, he just it’s he’s dynamic. I think he’s one of the most dynamic guys in the country cuz he’s so fast with the ball in his hands, right? And so, you know, obviously a lot of people want to talk about AJ. A lot of people want to talk about Richie, you know, then all of a sudden you’re worried about those two and Rob just breaks his man down on off the dribble and gets to the basket. You saw a number of times even in that the short stance he had in that game. And so I mean he’s going to he’s going to really be a a really really important part of our team. Um and then not to mention like one thing I spend a ton of time on and this is where the Nebraska game we couldn’t do this and to your question about the Carolina game. I spend hours upon hours upon hours on lineups, rotations, who’s subbing in for who? How can we I mean this this was like this was my job when I was in the NBA. Like I was that was what I was tasked to do. How are we gonna sub Kevin Durant and Devin Booker and Chris Paul to optimize all those guys? So, taking some of that and Akos, my analytics guy who was with me in the NBA, he, you know, he’s here now. We’ve we’re drawing comparisons of how we subbed it with Kevin and Book and how can we do that with Rob and AJ and Richie and so trying to optimize those lineups where AJ’s off the floor, how can we how can we sort of feature other guys and so forth. Um, and Rob obviously plays a huge role in that and that’s why we that’s why he’s here. How do you see Ka evolving in year two in your program? Um, you know, I I hate to say this about guys, but some guys are just true. Like some guys are just gamers and that’s what he is. You know, he just when the lights come on, man, the guy just takes it to another level. So, I’m trying to I’m trying to tap into that more with him in practice to get him to just bring that juice every day. Um, I think he’s he’s going to one, I think he’ll play more, right? I think he’s hard. It was hard to take him off the floor last year because he’s so good defensively and he puts so much pressure on the rim offensively. So, I don’t know if I see him growing like I don’t think he’s going to come out and start shooting step back threes. I think you’re going to see the same KA just hopefully more of it. Um, I do think his free throw shooting is an area we we invested a lot of time this summer. Uh he’s a guy that’s got to be able to knock him down at a higher clip than he did and he’s taken personal pride in that and I look forward to seeing an improved free throw shooter. Were there any were there any other guys that took big statistical jumps in this in the offseason table with free throws but any other guys that took big leaps in their shooting? Um I mean I think I think my hyo will because I think my hyo is going to be a lot less stressed this year. like he he he come he came in the game too many times last year and was really I think validating his success on shooting threes and so I think he’s now taking better shots. I think they’re going in at a higher clip. So in terms of shooting I would point to him. Um but in terms of uh stuff that isn’t shooting related I think like Richie’s improved as a passer. I think his ability to find cable for lobs and things like that. He had one yesterday at practice that was really impressive. So, I think that’s something he’s added a little bit to his game. Thanks, guys.
