There are fond memories, sure. This was the building, after all, where Kevin Young watched his former Phoenix Suns close out a sweep of the Nuggets on the Suns’ dream run to the NBA Finals in 2020-21, the first year of a tenure in the desert that molded him.
But really, this return to Ball Arena brought “nightmares,” as Young put it Wednesday, of trying to scheme a Jamal Murray-Nikola Jokic pick-and-roll that proved near-impossible, the attack that broke then-associate head coach Young and the Suns in a subsequent playoff series in 2022-23.
“I stand by — one of the hardest teams to guard in all of basketball,” Young recalled Wednesday, of the Nuggets. “So I’m glad we’re not having to deal with that.”
A few years later, a splashy move to the college ranks to captain rising power BYU brought Young back to Ball Arena on Thursday for a new challenge: hungry, scrappy, No. 11 VCU, searching for an upset of Young’s run-and-gun Cougars. This was a different game. There was no threat of a 6-foot-11 Joker twirling to spray passes on a wide-open NBA floor. Nor was this a seven-game playoff series with a chance to lose and re-scout. This was Madness, where a lax effort against a plucky underdog meant the death of a season.
No matter. Young and No. 6 BYU put the Field of 68 on notice in a convincing 80-71 win over VCU, a Big 12 program with deep pockets and a deep talent pool running pro-style hoops on a collegiate stage. They pushed the pace after made baskets, ballhandlers Richie Saunders and Egor Demin hardly relaxing for 40 minutes. A set of undersized bigs ran the floor relentlessly, rolling hard off screens as lob threats.
And standing on the sidelines in a familiar environment at Ball — even if the game was different — helped steady any nerves buzzing in the 43-year-old Young.
“Just the familiarity, for me, actually was something that kind of was calming and soothing,” Young said postgame.
Even if his nightmares comment was slightly “tongue-in-cheek,” as Young said postgame, the former Suns coach exorcised the Nuggets demons of a previous coaching life. And his BYU Cougars (25-9) turned a new leaf with him, securing the program’s first March win since 2011-12 and avenging an upset loss to Duquesne in last year’s NCAA Tournament.
Leading scorer Saunders paced BYU with 16 points. BYU’s bigs impressed mightily, with a sea of blue at Ball bellowing “FOUSS” after every scrappy bucket from senior Fousseyni Traore (13 points, nine rebounds).
The standout, though, was Demin, a baby-faced 19-year-old from Moscow, Russia, who’s endured a season of inconsistent shotmaking after coming to BYU as one of the most highly-touted recruits in Cougar history. In front of a packed-out BYU crowd in Denver, including former Cougar legend Jimmer Fredette — BYU’s last first-round draft pick — Demin put his NBA ceiling on full display in a 15-point game.
First came a pro-level stepback 3 to give the Cougars some momentum five minutes in. Then a curling top-of-the-arc triple off a handoff the next possession. Then a catch-and-shoot triple to break a back-and-forth tie late in the first half, a guard shooting 27% from deep burying three first-half 3s.
BYU roared to a 12-2 run to close the first half, buoyed by Demin’s shotmaking and gritty second-chance opportunities generated by Traore, a 6-foot-6, 250-pound barrel of a big man. Saunders got going in the second half to truly open the floodgates, scoring BYU’s first six points of the frame on a back-to-back three and and-one layup. And center Keba Keita (nine rebounds, four blocks) and Traore kept VCU at bay in the second half with dirty-work effort on the glass, despite the red-hot efforts of Rams lifer Zeb Jackson, who led VCU with 23 points on 9-of-13 shooting.
“We’re not ready to be done yet,” Saunders smiled postgame. “It just, it means so much that we were able to win and get to this point that we haven’t done before.”
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