In the 51 days since he was hired on April 16 to replace Kentucky-bound Mark Pope as the 16th men’s basketball coach at BYU, Kevin Young has hired five new assistant coaches and a basketball chief of staff — all while persuading some key players to stay at BYU and attracting a few more from the transfer portal or high school ranks.
Now the real work begins — molding this collection of coaches and players from all over the world with varied backgrounds into a bonafide Big 12 team.
The Cougars have been practicing a couple hours every day since Monday — although not all the players expected to be on the 2024-25 roster have participated. For instance, wing Dawson Baker is still on his honeymoon.
Young met with local reporters who cover the Cougars for the first time since his introductory news conference on Thursday, answering questions for 10 minutes on a variety of topics. He said his family is still in the Phoenix area as his children finish up the school year there and complete a couple of summer camps for which they were registered.
He said he and his wife, Melissa, are “getting close” to purchasing a home in Utah County.
“So we got a couple personal things we got to take care of in the next week or so, but after that we feel like we will start making the full transition,” he said.
Young said he feels like he’s “coming out from under the hole we were buried in for a little bit,” and “getting a lot of stuff checked off the list.”
Wednesday marked the first time the entire staff has been together: Young, Brandon Duncan, Chris Burgess, Will Voigt, Tim Fanning and the most recent addition, John Linehan. New chief of staff Doug Stewart is also here.
The 42-year-old head coach said which assistants will handle which elements of the game is “still a work in progress,” but it is no secret that Voigt, considered a defensive guru and the inventor of the “peel and switch” technique on defense, will be heavily involved with that side of the ball.
“Each (assistant) brings something different there. And then from a tactical side, I will have guys broken up similar to a football staff, with an offensive and defensive (coordinator), kind of lanes,” he said. “And then heavy in the player development space as well, and then some special projects. Those are kind of the buckets that they will fill.”
Here are a few other responses to the 20 or so questions Young fielded Thursday. Some replies have been edited for clarity and length.
On his first impressions of his new squad:
“They are eager — eager to learn. I have tried to tell them to understand it is a lot of newness, a lot of new terminology, and not to get caught up in that. That will happen over time. But there has been good energy in the building, good leadership out of Dallin (Hall) and Richie (Saunders), so things have been good.”
How he wants to use the two scholarships still open, which he said he wants to fill before training camp begins in September:
“It is a moving target, man. Things change literally every five minutes, and so that’s one thing with having the staff all together. It is a lot easier to move on that stuff as things happen. You know, there was a lot that just happened even before we came down here (to practice), so I don’t have a timeline on it. We are just trying to make good decisions.”
On what positions is he still looking for to fill out this roster:
“Yeah, I mean, there are things we are looking for. Shooting is always a thing I go to, always. You can never have too much shooting. Positionally, we are looking at a little bit more size at different spots. And then athleticism, that is something I have been on from Day 1. We are trying to check a lot of boxes with those last two spots.”
On the importance of using all 13 scholarships available:
“Yeah, we would like to. But at the same time, be able to have flexibility. There are certain guys that we have targeted at the moment that if we can get, we would use them right now. … We are keeping our options open, but we definitely have specific targets at the moment that we are ready to pull the trigger on.”
On whether he called the assistant coaches he hired, or if they contacted him first:
“A little bit of both. A couple of these guys I had on my radar if I would have gone the NBA route. There were a few I talked to over the years about that. There was a mixture.”
On the reaction he’s received from the BYU community when out and about in Provo:
“Oh, it has been great. You know, you can kinda sense some excitement in the community. When Will Voigt got here, we were up here until pretty late one night and (went to eat at In-N-Out Burger). … And some young man came up and said, are you Kevin Young? … So they are excited and taking pictures. I had like special sauce all over my face and whatever. But it has been great. Unbelievable support for the program and our coaches are sensing that quickly.”