BYU Offers Beckham Black and the Audacity of Kevin Young

BYU Offers the Number One Player in 2027 Class

The Chicago Bulls drafted Caleb Wilson 4th in this year’s NBA draft. Wilson scored 35 points in his first summer league game and proceeded to average 23 points and 7 rebounds. Two years ago, before Wilson’s senior year and after he finished his AAU career with an EYBL championship he released his list of top 12 schools on July 31, 2024. After all the many offers he received as one of the top players in the country, he narrowed his focus down to 12 schools he wanted to investigate further.

BYU was not in that group of 12.

Do you know who is audacious? BYU Head Coach Kevin Young is audacious. He doesn’t care what top players announce on social media. He knows if he can get you to think about PROvo, you’ll learn that the process is not hypothetical and he can get you to BYU and the NBA. He doesn’t need to be in your top 12. Young and a team from BYU visited Wilson about a month later. Wilson would end up committing to North Carolina, while BYU would have to settle for future number 1 pick A.J. Dybantsa. The real audacity of Kevin Young is that despite BYU never signing a prospect in the top 30 prior to his arrival, he thought he could pair two of the top five players in the country together in his first full recruiting class.

Fast forward two years, on July 15th Beckham Black became the number one player in the country for the class of 2027. Beckham is a 6’3” point guard from Texas who played for a high school in Florida last season. His brother, Anthony Black, attended Arkansas and was the number 6 pick in the 2023 NBA draft. Black has been heavily rumored to be going to Arkansas. Arkansas Coach John Calipari has a long track record of developing guards for the NBA and has many high profile recruiting victories lately, including beating out BYU for big man Caleb Ourigou. Black has taken multiple unofficial visits to Arkansas. He recently announced he was visiting North Carolina and Texas. Since the end of the AAU season he’s essentially narrowed his list to three schools, with Duke and Georgetown also to be rumored in the mix.

If BYU coaches had not seen him already, they definitely saw Black for the first time while playing in Lehi as a sophomore for Duncanville against Orem High on 12/14/24. Orem featured Cougar signee Chamberlain Burgess. Black had 6 assists and 6 points and played stellar defense against future Utah St. player Jax Allen in a Duncanville win.

BYU did not offer Black at their first opportunity which would have been the summer before Black’s junior season. BYU did not offer Black at any point during his junior season in which the staff likely watched most of his school’s games since they had offered three other players from his school. They also did not offer him as he was a key contributor to this summer’s USA U17 team that took gold in Turkiye, despite offering A.J. Williams during the event who also starred on the team.

Kevin Young was in the front row for all six of Black’s games at the Peach Jam, the last event of the Nike AAU season that ran from July 14-19. Black was awesome, he averaged 24 points and 5 assists, putting him in the top 4 for each category. He shot 53% and led his team to the quarterfinals of the event before falling to a team led by Cayden Daughtry, another top point guard prospect who also has an offer from BYU (though the Cougars are likely out of the running at this point). Despite not offering earlier, the Cougars pounced on this opportunity to offer.

We know what assuming makes, but what does audacity make?

BYU’s offer to Beckham Black likely means nothing in the grand scheme of things. The Cougars offer a lot of players who ultimately don’t end up coming to Provo and it’s a completely asymmetric bet to offer the number one player in the country. There’s infinitely many reasons the offer wasn’t announced earlier and we can assume the Black-Young relationship has a strong, time-tested foundation.

It’s probably a coincidence, that a day after BYU offered Black, Arkansas offered Cayden Daughtry. Or maybe the path isn’t clear for Black to Arkansas and the audacious Kevin Young found his opening.

It’s possible the BYU recruiting flywheel just reached full speed. The Cougars are a rumored favorite for the number two player in the 2027 class, Demarcus Henry. The Cougars are early favorites for the class of ‘28 number one player A.J. Williams(along with Duke and Arkansas), who is rumored to be reclassifying to 2027. Does BYU have enough money for all three players and a returning Collin Chandler. Will a national championship parade go down University Avenue or University Parkway? If BYU signs all three, can we have an event at Iggy’s?