When now 43-year-old Kevin Young was introduced as BYU’s 20th men’s basketball coach last April, more than a few people who gathered at the Marriott Center snickered a bit when he promised to make the program a pipeline to the NBA.

After all, the Cougars don’t currently have a single alum playing in the world’s top basketball league, and haven’t had one since Elijah Bryant was a seldom-used substitute on the world champion Milwaukee Bucks in 2021. BYU hasn’t had a player drafted in the NBA since Jimmer Fredette in 2011.

When Young, who was an assistant with the Philadelphia 76ers from 2016-19 and Phoenix Suns from 2020-23, told the crowd that he would bring four- and five-star prospects to the conservative school in Provo with a strict honor code and high academic standards through his vast network of national and international basketball.

When he said he would use NBA methods and processes, and attract people to his coaching and support staffs who had experience working in that league, there were more incredulous stares.

But perhaps the most pronounced disbelief came just before Young’s first season, when the father of three who was raised in Texas and Georgia said he had retained and imported enough talent on BYU’s roster for the Cougars to finish in the top half of the expanded, 16-team Big 12 — one of the top two college basketball conferences in the country — in his first year.

“Some people out there in Utah thought he was nuts,” said Young’s former high school coach in the Atlanta area, Roger Kvam.