The day after Kevin Young finished his NBA duties last April, the new BYU coach found himself in a Scottsdale ballroom just a few feet away from Utah head coach Craig Smith.
At the time, Young was deep in talks with Smith’s top assistant, Chris Burgess, about joining his staff. In fact, he had just called BYU associate athletic director Brian Santiago to fly Burgess down to Phoenix to meet face-to-face. He didn’t realize the Big 12 coaches meetings would coincide with his deceit.
“I just felt it was very uncomfortable. Craig is right here. I am interviewing his guy. It was just super weird,” Young recalled back in October.
But within a few days, Young closed the deal — poaching Smith’s top guy right in front of him.
“Stuck it to Utah at the same time,” Young proudly told a group of BYU donors after it happened.
Utah handed BYU a 73-72 overtime loss in the Huntsman Center over the weekend. It happened in equally cruel fashion, as Smith sent out former Cougar Hunter Erickson to put BYU away with six points in overtime.
It leaves Young, the darling of the offseason, now in a precarious position. His team is 2-4 in conference play and fighting for its NCAA Tournament life. This was supposed to be the easy part of the schedule, but Smith just knocked the Cougars back.
“We’ve got to learn how to win close games. We are right there to win all of these games. You win or lose games on the margins. We’ve come up short too many times,” Young said.
This one, though, exposed the weaknesses of Young’s roster that have lingered for weeks, if not months.
Whereas Utah went to its strength to beat BYU — punishing the Cougars inside — BYU didn’t have an identity of its own to fall back on when the game tightened.
The Utes’ top two players, big men Lawson Lovering and Ezra Ausar, combined for 39 points. Even as BYU tried defender after defender — switching guard Trevin Knell on the 7-foot-1 Lovering at one point — there was no matchup that was effective.
“I thought our one-on-one technique was poor in the post on some of that stuff. He is a big strong guy. He made us pay,” Young said.
The Utes scored 14 straight points on layups and putback dunks to start the second half and played like a team that knew its identity: 38 of its 73 points came in the paint.
“We were playing almost like Golden State Warrior basketball, without making as many threes,” earlier in the year, Smith said. “And I said no, this isn’t how this team is made. We are going to play how we play [inside]. … Keep going to it until they stopped us.”
