Is it possible Kevin Young has somehow elevated BYU’s defense in the twilight of this season?
It seems so.
Young says so.
The Cougars’ performances in Kansas City this past week indicate there has been an uptick in defensive acumen by his team.
The 82-76 win over Texas Tech (albeit sans JT Toppin) was an impressive defensive effort. The 105-91 win over Kansas State last Tuesday in the Big 12 Tournament was not — at least for the first half.
But the 68-48 win over West Virginia certainly was, and when No. 5 Houston and the Cougars were knotted at 51 with 12 minutes to go on Thursday, there was a tremendous defensive effort by BYU.
Consider: The Cougars quadrupled their forced-turnover total against Houston in Kansas City (16) compared with the previous meeting in Provo (4).
On the other hand, West Virginia and Kansas are lower-tier Big 12 offenses.
It would be accurate for any critic to say Young has stirred something in his team since that embarrassing, almost putrid effort his team showed on Valentine’s Day, the honor Jimmer Day, in the Marriott Center against West Virginia.
That, many folks say, was one of the worst performances by a BYU team they’d ever witnessed in that building.
Young says he went through a challenging personal stretch to figure it out. The loss of Richie Saunders ripped a real emotional engine out of his squad. It sent the team reeling.
What Young explained publicly is that his staff scrapped its highly nuanced and sophisticated layered defensive schemes. He dumbed it down. He made it simple: You have a guy, defend harder, for a longer time, and, well, better.
This past week, his defense has gone from the 70s to 50s in KenPom defensive rankings.
He also fired up and challenged his athletes, guys like 6-foot-9 Khadim Mboup and 6-foot-7 Dominique Diomande.
He got 6-foot-6 Kennard Davis re-engaged by getting him more involved in the offense, calling his number. As they say in the mafia stories by Mario Puzo, he let Davis “wet his beak.”
In short, Young got his team to reinvent itself. Regenerate ideas, effort, roles and performances. He pressed some buttons.
It has caused disruption, steals, fast break buckets and momentum changes. It did against Houston in a loss.
After the Houston game, when his team played its third game in three days and ran out of gas halfway through the second half, Young said the experience in those three games was vital to the rest of March.
It gave him time to change his team for a scond season of sorts in postseason play.
“I can see it in the guys. Everyone in our locker room is extremely competitive, and we’ve had some dark times, even recently, but we were able to just push through it and just like there’s always a way, just pound the rock,” Young said.
“I’ve used every cliché in the coaching book, probably, in that space. It’s been rewarding because you know, when you go through adversity, it really does bring groups together. I think it’s brought our group closer together.”
This is how Young will take his squad into Selection Sunday when it will learn who and where it will play again this week.
“I think we’re extremely ready,” Young said. “This has been a season of, like, three different stories. I talked about that, and AJ (Dybantsa) mentioned it, and I mentioned it to the guys in the locker room. I think it’s a blessing that we were able to come here and play, to get three games here.
“It was important because we were still searching for this group’s identity because of all the injuries that we’ve had, and I’m really proud of where our team is at right now. I thought the win at Texas Tech before this tournament was giant, and we were able to find a little bit of a recipe.”
Young continued: “I think these guys have an inner belief in where they are as a team right now, so I think we’re extremely ready, and it makes me feel good, because as I told them in the locker room about two weeks ago, I was honestly not sure. I personally was not sure.
“I think these guys (AJ Dybantsa and Rob Wright III) have proven that we can make some noise in the tournament and because of how much everyone else in that locker room has stepped up. You know, we’re looking forward to — disappointed in the outcome tonight — but we’re looking forward to getting back home and getting some much-needed rest so we can gear up for what I’ve told these guys is the best time of the year in all of basketball.”
ESPN bracketology has BYU playing in Portland as a No. 6 seed against 11 seed Texas or SMU as of Saturday.
One could argue that the Cougars have already played an Elite Eight schedule in the Big 12 and during the season. BYU has played the following (projected NCAA Tournament seed in parenthesis).
- Arizona twice (1).
- Iowa State (2).
- Houston twice (2).
- UConn (2).
- Kansas (4).
- Wisconsin (5).
- Texas Tech twice (5).
- Miami (7).
- Clemson (8).
- Villanova (9).
- TCU (9).
- UCF (10).
- Dayton (not currently projected in the tournament field but will play in Sunday’s Atlantic 10 championship game and could get the conference’s automatic bid).