TEMPE, Arizona — Accolades have poured in the past few days for coach Kevin Young’s BYU basketball team.
Richie Saunders is Big 12 Player of the Week, BYU received its first national ranking of the season, landing at No. 25 in the AP Top 25 survey, and several publications named the Cougars their national team of the week after back-to-back wins over blue bloods Kansas and Arizona.
Young is not that impressed. It all means nothing, the first-year BYU coach said Monday, if the Cougars stumble Wednesday night (7:30 p.m. MST, ESPN+) against Arizona State at Desert Financial Arena. No game in the ultra-difficult Big 12 can be called a trap game, but this one comes close, for a variety of reasons.
Chiefly, it is because No. 25 BYU (19-8, 10-6) is physically and emotionally drained after edging Arizona 96-95 Saturday night in Tucson, while ASU (13-14, 4-12) was bulldozed by BYU 76-56 on New Year’s Eve in Provo.
Also, Arizona State will be shorthanded but is still playing with purpose and intent, despite its status as one of the worst teams in the league; leading scorer B.J. Freeman was dismissed before the Sun Devils routed Kansas State 66-54 on Sunday in Manhattan, while freshman center Jayden Quaintance left the game with a few minutes remaining with a lower-leg injury of some sort.
The Arizona Republic reported that Quaintance, who had scored 18 points in the win that snapped ASU’s six-game losing streak, left the arena on crutches.
Young got in front of ASU’s situation with his players after the Cougars practiced Monday at the Phoenix Suns’ practice facility. The first-year BYU coach was a Suns assistant from 2020 to 2024.
Arizona State “is a team that is playing free. There are more guys getting an opportunity that are dangerous. They just proved it against Kansas State,” Young said. “You know, just trying to get ahead of those things and actually addressing them as opposed to dusting them under the rug is kinda my approach there.”
Despite its issues and 15th-place standing in the 16-team Big 12, Arizona State has plenty of remaining talent and carries a NET ranking of 60. That means the game represents a Quad 1 opportunity for the Cougars, whose NET ranking is 29 after Saturday’s 96-95 win at Arizona.
BYU’s physical and emotional state “is a great question,” Young said, acknowledging that he was “pretty exhausted” after the Arizona game, as well as on Sunday. Having the game on Wednesday, rather than Tuesday, “gives us that extra day buffer, which I think is good,” Young said. “Because that was an absolute slugfest of a college basketball game mentally and emotionally. I think we will have plenty of time to recharge and get to where we need to get to.”
Young said the Cougars are in a familiar situation because they also routed Cincinnati at home by a count of 80-52, only to see a much different Bearcats team in the Queen City and fall 84-66 two weeks later. Arizona State will be out to avenge that 20-point loss in Provo.
“They (ASU) are a team (that) just dismissed one of their best players, and then they go out and beat Kansas State by a significant margin,” Young said. “They got guys that were sitting on the bench wondering why they weren’t out there. So they come in playing free, playing aggressive. I know we learned from the Cincinnati experience. We handled them pretty easily at home, and then we go on the road and it is a totally different story.”
Young said the Cougars haven’t been doing “nothing too crazy” in the Valley of the Sun, despite it being his former home, since arriving here late Saturday night. He used his relationships from working for the Suns to set up the practice at their facility, while hoping to show players “what things are like in the NBA” and to “break up the monotony of the season” with four league games remaining.
“Great memories here in Phoenix,” Young said. “I really grew as a person and as a coach. It was a little weird coming back in, and not working here. … But you know, it reminded me of all the work that we put in. And that’s what we tried to do (Monday), come in and have a good film session, then have a good work day on the court.”
Part of that film session involved breaking down the Arizona film, especially the final few minutes where the Cougars blew a late lead, only to win it on two free throws by Saunders with 3.2 seconds left on the clock. Lost in the madness that ensued after the game and the victory over another blue blood was the fact that BYU gave up 95 points and allowed Arizona to shoot 54% from the field and 45% (10 of 22) from 3-point range.
“In close games like that there are so many nuances that you can take from, and learn from. We kinda walked the end of the game down, just trying to have the players see the game situationally through the eyes of our coaching staff,” Young said. “… We have gotten more granular with the game plan over the last four games, really, just trying to highlight things our guys are comfortable being able to execute defensively.”
