The BYU men’s basketball program added some more staff members for the 2023-24 season.

Then they knocked down some walls, literally and figuratively.

The move into the Big 12 and some adjustments from the NCAA have pushed the Cougars to increase their staff in all sports, including basketball.

This spring, Collin Terry was added as an assistant coach. Nate Austin was hired as the Director of Basketball Operations and grad assistants Carsen Williams, Melvin Goins II, Leander Ridgeway Jr. and Matthew Santoro also play key roles to help out head coach Mark Pope and assistants Cody Fueger, Nick Robinson, Kahil Fennell and Terry.

The BYU coaching staff has also done some remodeling.

“We tore down all the walls in our office,” Pope said. “We used to feel super siloed, which was a little bit of an example of kind of how it felt sometimes. And now there’s nowhere you can go where you can’t see each other. Coach Fennell actually changed his office because, where he was, if I looked up from my desk I was looking straight at him and he’s like, ‘I can’t take the pressure.'”

The new look goes well with the way BYU is trying to approach this season.

“I think we’re doing this community wide,” Pope said. “We don’t have a ton of room for error. We have a good team and we have some spaces that are real strengths for us. We can overwhelm people with our group but we are not overwhelming individuals. So we need to do this collectively. Our guys need to do a five on three every space in this game where they can be five on three and we need to do it there.

“Our staff is the same. We’ve got to do this as a committee group. It is helping to have some extra bodies because we have some really talented assistant coaches and we have some really talented GA’s. I like our staff a lot right now and we need each other.”

Pope said Fennell is in charge of the game prep and assigns the other assistants for each game.

“We’re kind of double-teaming every scout right now,” Pope said. “Kahil is taking half of them on his own and he distributes the others. I think we’re doing better than we have before.”

One of the additional benefits of having a veteran team is in game prep, where experience helps to prepare for each opponent.

“It’s definitely a big part of our defensive scheme, being able to know the tendencies of the guy we’re guarding,” BYU senior guard Spencer Johnson said. “In turn, that helps the team scout. You focus on what he likes to do or what he doesn’t like to do. The actions they run, you know you can help a little bit here, and on this action you’ve got to be more sucked up to your guy or more in the gaps.”

The Thousand Year-Old Man

At 26 years of age, Johnson is the oldest player in Division I basketball.

The former American Fork standout says he doesn’t have any trouble relating to his younger teammates. Fellow senior Jaxson Robinson said Johnson has “those vet moves.”

“It’s been my dream since I was a little kid to be the oldest player in college basketball,” Johnson deadpanned. “So it’s a dream come true. It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do to change it so I’m just rolling with it.”

Scouting Report

BYU’s opponent on Friday at the Delta Center is Fresno State. The Bulldogs, coached by Justin Hutson, are 3-3 after losing to UC Santa Barbara 69-65 on Monday.

Leading scorer Jemarl Baker (12.5 points per game, 55 3-pointers) transferred to New Mexico in the offseason and Isaih Moore (11.3 points, 7.5 rebounds per game) graduated. This season, senior guard Isaiah Hill is averaging 15 points per game. Another senior guard, Donavan Yap Jr., scores 12.3 points per contest and leads the Bulldogs with 38 assists.

Fresno State has five players 6-foot-10 or taller, the best of which is probably 6-11 senior Eduardo Andre (8.8 points, 5.8 rebounds per game).

The Cougars, meanwhile, will be without junior forward Fousseyni Traore, who suffered a hamstring injury last week against North Carolina State and is “day-to-day,” according to Pope. BYU will get 6-9 Atiki Ally Atiki back in the lineup after he was suspended for one game for an altercation against Arizona State.

Transfer big man Aly Khalifa (6-11) is also available after playing 27 minutes against the Wolfpack.

Meanwhile, the Cougars are dealing with a little more attention after breaking into the AP Top 25 this week.

Johnson, the veteran, is the voice of reason.

“My second year here, we were ranked No. 12,” he said. “We beat Oregon in the year. Then as the season progressed, we had some rough patches and didn’t make the NCAA Tournament. We played in the NIT. We know there’s a lot left to accomplish and a lot left to do.”

Pope added: “It’s not hard to look around and see all this stuff that happens in college basketball every day. If we don’t come to perform our best and play on our toes, our night can get really hard. We’ll have to play hard to win on Friday. I don’t know why anyone would want to live any other way. These games are awesome.”

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