BYU basketball coach Kevin Young woke up Monday morning and told his wife that the Cougars only have 10 regular-season games left in his inaugural season at the helm in Provo.
Melissa Young was just as amazed.
“She was like, ‘What, are you serious?’” the coach said Monday afternoon in his weekly press briefing with reporters. “We are used to (the season) going on forever (in the NBA). … This is crazy, compared to what I was used to.”
The good news is that BYU (15-6, 6-4) is trending in the right direction as its 20-game Big 12 schedule reaches its midpoint. The bad news is that the latter half of the season looks more difficult than the first half, beginning Tuesday night when former Western Athletic Conference rival and new Big 12 member Arizona visits Provo for the first time since Nov. 28, 1998.
The Wildcats (15-6, 9-1) moved back into the Associated Press Top 25 on Monday, landing at No. 20 after, like BYU, having won four straight. Arizona knocked off No. 3 Iowa State 86-75 in overtime last Monday thanks to Caleb Love’s past-halfcourt heave to tie it in regulation, then outlasted rival Arizona State 81-72 in a fiery game in Tempe in which Sun Devils coach Bobby Hurley refused to have his players shake hands postgame with Arizona players.
Just another day in the Big 12, in which “every game is super intense,” Young said.
Tipoff for the 40th all-time meeting between UofA and BYU is set for 9 p.m. at the Marriott Center, and the game will be televised nationally by ESPN, with Mark Neely and Corey Williams on the call. Yes, you read that right: tipoff is at 9 p.m.
“It is what it is,” Young said of the late tip. “I do kinda like the tip times varying, just because it gets you ready for the postseason. Anything can happen there. We have had a myriad of different start times. So our guys will be ready to go.”
On the topic of postseason play, BYU’s chances to make it beyond the Big 12 tournament have increased immensely the past two weeks as the Cougars have won four straight and picked up Quad 1 wins with victories over Baylor at home and UCF on the road.
As expected, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi put the Cougars into the field of 68 in his Bracketology projections, slotting BYU among the “Last Four In” and No. 44 overall. Arizona is a No. 5-seed, and ranked No. 17 overall by Lunardi.
With a NET ranking of 32 and a KenPom rating of 31, BYU should probably be ranked better by the Joey Brackets, but Young wasn’t complaining Monday. That BYU only has two Quad 1 wins — Baylor and UCF — is probably what is keeping the Cougars from a higher seed in the Big Dance.
Young was, however, aware of where BYU sits in the Big 12 standings (tied for fifth) and the importance of piling up those all-important Quad 1 wins — which Tuesday’s showdown with Arizona certainly will be if BYU prevails.
“I look at (NCAA Tournament projections) from time to time. But we really do just try to go one game at a time and just look at the next game that is in front of us. That has served us well,” Young said. “Hopefully we stack up enough wins to put ourselves in the tournament. Obviously, I am aware, and I do say to the guys that we have work to do. We don’t get into the nuts and bolts of what that looks like. But I think our guys are smart enough to know that we gotta continue to play good basketball and win games.”
BYU has won four straight conference games for the first time since 2021, when it did that twice in the West Coast Conference. After winning its last four of the regular season that year, it downed Pepperdine 82-77 in overtime at the WCC Tournament before losing 88-78 to Gonzaga in the championship game.
Realizing that fortunes change weekly in this league — just ask Kansas — Young said he likes where his program is at after a soft nonconference schedule led to a rocky start in Big 12 play.
“You know, I think we are finding our way offensively. I think consistently our pace has improved a lot over the last four or five games. I think we are finding some rhythm there,” he said. “I think offensively, identity-wise, we are trending in the right direction.”
Young inserted Rutgers transfer Mawot Mag into the starting lineup a couple weeks ago, and the results have been significant. The senior from Melbourne, Australia, often draws the opposing team’s best scorer because of his own defensive prowess.
“I think defensively we are continuing to explore matchups, explore coverages, explore how much we want to just keep Mawot on certain guys, versus switching, which we do a lot of,” Young said. “So those are areas we are continuing to improve upon.”
Young said he has spent “a lot of my mental bandwidth” on having the right combinations in at the end of close games, and lately that has paid off as well.
Can BYU raise its game against No. 20 Arizona?
Arizona leads the series vs. BYU 20-19, with most of those games coming from 1962 to 1978 when both schools were in the WAC. BYU is 14-4 against UofA in Provo, although Arizona won 78-74 in overtime in that previously mentioned game in 1998.
BYU has won the last two matchups, thanks primarily to Jimmer Fredette. The second-leading scorer in BYU history had 49 points in a 99-69 BYU win in Tucson in 2009, and followed that up with a 33-point effort in BYU’s 87-65 win at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City in 2010.
Tuesday’s game will mark the return of Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd to the Marriott Center, after the youthful-looking 50-year-old coach was a Gonzaga assistant from 2001-21.
BYU is a slight favorite, despite Arizona being tied for first in the league with Houston.
“I don’t put too much stock into a good time to catch any team. They are a really good team. Tommy does a heckuva job. He’s very experienced, knows what he is doing. They are very organized. They play really hard. They have a clear identity. So I am just looking forward to a good basketball game against a good team,” Young said. “I think our confidence is growing as we continue to win basketball games in this league in particular, and I think this will be a really good basketball game.”
