3 Trends to Watch in Summer Recruiting

The Cougars will continue to add players from the portal to finalize their roster for the upcoming ‘25-’26 season.  May 28th may prove to be an important deadline as that’s when players will need to withdraw their name from the draft to preserve college eligibility and BYU is likely courting a player or two considering the draft.

As summer arrives, the staff will turn their attention back to the high school grassroots or club circuit.  Tournaments began the last week of March and will continue into July, with June featuring tournaments for school teams instead of clubs.  The first Nike EYBL event this weekend in Mesa, Arizona will feature at least 10 players with offers from BYU.  Here are three trends to watch throughout the summer:  

1. PROvo 

BYU fans would love for the Cougars to continue to build their reputation as a place for future professional players.  BYU is actively pursuing players of that ilk and has offered the number 2, 4, 10 and 20 players in the class of ‘26 as well as a smattering of players ranked between 25-60 in the ESPN rankings.  Number 28 Austin Goosby (6’4” Melissa, TX, Melissa) and number 44 Anthony Felesi (6’5”, Orem, UT, Utah Prep) have taken visits to Provo, but we don’t know of a lot of other progress.  Comparing the time table to last year, it was almost exactly right now last year that the Dybantsa family came to Utah and toured Utah Prep as well as meeting with newly hired BYU Coach Kevin Young.

Speaking of Utah Prep, their roster creation could be a key sub plot for Cougar fans to monitor.  In the fall of 2023, Utah Prep lost to local public school Dixie in a tournament in Vegas.  By the fall of 2024 Utah Prep was nationally ranked and invited to every important tournament in the country.  Utah Prep hired a former NBA Coach, but now lost a lot of high contributing seniors.  It’s difficult to imagine Utah Prep regressing to where they were, so they’ll have to recruit a number of big names to stay at their current level.  It came out in Dybantsa’s recruiting story that many of the Utah Prep donors are also BYU donors.  It’s likely whoever Utah Prep adds will also be highly considering BYU.

2. Best Local Class Since 1990

Going into the fall of 1990, BYU was adding a nationally ranked recruiting class filled out mostly by kids from the state of Utah.  Surefire NBA prospect 7-6 Shawn Bradley, high school All-American Ryan Cuff and Randy Reid who scored more than 2000 points in high school (roughly equivalent to 28 points a game, every game since he was a freshman).  

This year’s crop of Utah players would match up well with that group.  The aforementioned Felesi is ranked 44th nationally, Dean Rueckert (6’6” Provo, UT, Timpview) is ranked 59th.  The ESPN rankings only go to the top 60, but Junior County (6’4”, Highland, UT, Wasatch Academy) is ranked 37th by the 247sports recruiting service and Jamyn Sondrup (6’9”, Springville, UT, Springville) is just outside the top 100.  In addition, the number 10 player in the country Ikenna Alozie (6’2” Glendale, AZ, Dream City Christian) goes to high school in Arizona, but will play on the same club team as Rueckert, County and Sondrup, so it’s likely the BYU staff will be at every game he plays this summer.  Rueckert and Sondrup have already taken a visit to Washington and Felesi and County have already taken a visit to Houston.  

It’s not a given that players from Utah immediately want to go to BYU, but BYU seems to convert local kids at a higher rate.  Rueckert lives in Provo and goes to every home football game and Felesi lived in Orem for a lot of years and likely knows a lot of alumni.  Sondrup has been coached by Travis Hansen, who assists with a lot of BYU athletic department activities, since he was young.  If BYU can continue to gain traction with this Utah group, it will give a strong foundation to the class. 

3. Third week in July Offers

The grassroots season mostly wraps the third week in July, or specifically July 20th this summer, when each shoe company will host their season ending events.  In the ‘25 class, two of the three players received their offer from BYU during this period of what is essentially the last week of the grassroots season.  Xavion Staton was offered July 11th and Chamberlain Burgess was offered July 16th.  The staff had obviously seen both players long before then, there’s many reasons they might not have offered before these dates.  I’m not a master in negotiation, but there must certainly be an urgency to offers placed at the end of the season where the team might make an extra effort to close the deal and make up for lost time.  It’s worth paying closer attention to whom the Cougars offer as the grassroots season wraps up in July.