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PROVO — The most difficult part of BYU basketball's 77-58 loss to Washington State in the quarterfinals of the National Invitation Tournament wasn't the loss itself.
In a lot of ways, the Cougars overachieved on the 2021-22 campaign, winning 24 games with 11 losses, including a three-game run after being let out of the NCAA Tournament for the sixth time in seven years.
From rebounding from the loss of two senior forwards Gavin Baxter and Richard Harward to one final attempt at a tourney bid by Alex Barcello and Te'Jon Lucas, the Cougars had a lot of highs — an 81-49 win over then-No. 12 Oregon chief among them — and plenty of lows, including the first Quad 4 loss in the Mark Pope era at Pacific that started the slow unraveling of a once-promising season.
But when the finality of the season hit as the Cougars watched the visiting Cougars celebrate in the Marriott Center and visiting head coach Kyle Smith sing along to Frank Sintatra's "New York, New York" while celebrating a trip to Madison Square Garden, the gut punch became real.
By Thursday morning, Barcell, Lucas and the rest of the team woke up without a need to go to practice, report to the weight room, or watch any film.
Just like that, the BYU careers of Barcello, Lucas, Baxter, Harvard and any other player who decides to hang it up or move along in the offseason came to an end.
"I'm incredibly grateful for Te'Jon Lucas and Alex Barcello, for what they have done for this university and this basketball program," Pope said after the loss. "We will miss those guys; they are really special."
But like it or not, the sun also rose on Thursday with the Cougars coaching staff in need of preparing for next year — and beyond. The transfer portal keeps moving, and the Cougars have already reached out to several potential incoming transfers; former Wasatch Academy standout Mike Saunders Jr. has already revealed BYU is among the schools in the mix for the former Cincinnati playmaker's services, along with Utah, Cal and others.
And the future of BYU basketball? Well, Pope tried to paint an optimistic image even as he sat dejected and heartbroken in a postgame press conference following his team's NIT loss.
"I think our future is incredibly bright," Pope said. "These guys have done an unbelievable job winning a lot of games, but more importantly, laying a foundation of what our program is supposed to be. We've got a lot of work to do, got to get a lot better, but I'm incredibly optimistic about the future."
That future, of course, includes the Big 12 Conference. The Cougars are set to compete in the West Coast Conference for one more season before turning east and toward Texas in the newly configured Big 12, which will likely play with 14 teams before Texas and Oklahoma depart for the SEC.
BYU will soon be trading in Gonzaga, the top team in the country per KenPom, with KenPom's top league in the country, the Big 12 — a consortium of men's basketball powers led by Baylor, Kansas and Texas Tech at Nos. 4, 5 and 6, respectively.
A lot of schools see the Cougars as one of those programs already, from facilities to talent to the ability of Pope and his staff to achieve beyond the Cougars' current mid-major label.
"They've got some really good young bigs, as good as you find. We approach this as a Big 12 program," said Washington State coach Kyle Smith, who regularly faced the Cougars in the WCC with San Francisco. "They're headed there. We practiced in their practice facility. The fans are great.
"They're always going to be pretty skilled, but those young bigs are impressive. We've got good young bigs, too, and they give us fits."
Still, the season wouldn't be ending without a footnote for Barcello, the third-year BYU transfer from Arizona who rekindled his love for the game since coming to Provo and engaged a team, fan base and traveling media.
Barcello quickly became a fan favorite among the BYU students and leaves tied for the fifth-most 3-pointers in a single season with 88, the same number as former marksman Jonathan Tavernari. The senior from Chandler, Arizona, also leaves with the second-longest streak of consecutive starts, fourth-highest free-throw percentage, second-best 3-point percentage, seventh-most 3-point field goals made and ranks No. 25 in scoring in his short time at BYU.
"I would've loved to play with him," Tavernari told ESPN 960 of Barcello. "Kyle Collinsworth and Kresimir Cosic are the Cougars I wish I would've played with the most; AB is probably top-five.
"Alex is absolutely an all-time great. I have no doubt if he had been here another year, I wouldn't be on the all-time (3-point shooting) list anymore. But I look at Alex as being in a unique situation, in our church peculiar; kind of like with Jimmer, I don't think we're going to see another Alex with his situation, the way he came to BYU and embraced BYU, its standards, and its values. I'm amazed at it."
But as much as 2021-22 may be remembered as the senior season for a player who took full advantage of his college career by coming back unexpectedly to try to get the Cougars back into the NCAA Tournament after breaking a five-year drought in Indianapolis, it may be remembered for something more.
Depending on how he develops for the rest of his career, Fousseyni Traore may wind up being the breakout start of the season, a year remembered in history less as Barcello's senior year and more as Traore's freshman campaign.
Thrust into the starting role when Baxter went down with a season-ending knee injury at Utah Valley, Traore recorded his 279th rebound against Washington State, passing Yoeli Childs for the most by a freshman in program history. The native of Bamako, Mali, who prepped at Wasatch Academy has a chance to be an all-time great — and he's just getting started.
"He's grown so much," Pope said of Traore. "There are so many different slices of his game he needs to learn as a big, and he has done an incredible job growing from his first day to his last."
Between the development of Traore and fellow big Atiki Ally Atiki, BYU's post could prove to be exceptional over the next few seasons.
The Cougars are also expected to bring back high-scoring prep guards Dallin Hall of Fremont, Richie Saunders of Wasatch Academy and Tanner Toolson from Washington off church missions.
Turnover is also sure to follow — the transfer portal giveth, and the transfer portal taketh away in college basketball. That means several names on the current roster will probably look for playing time, better options or a more appropriate school elsewhere between now and the fall.
But if there's one thing Pope hopes to keep from this team, in addition to the re-emergence of Caleb Lohner during BYU's NIT run, it's their never-quit attitude — a group of players who could've given up on the season and finished around .500 while blaming it on injuries and bad luck.
Only four teams win a championship at the end of each college basketball season, from the NCAA to the NIT down to the College Basketball Invitational and lower-tier Basketball Classic. BYU wasn't one of them — making them more like most of the country than the best teams in the country.
But they fought. They battled. And with some fine-tuning and recruiting in the offseason, they just might get better.
"In terms of my team and this season, I am really proud of these guys," Pope said. "They had unbelievable fight and heart and they kept coming back through adversity.
"We won a lot of games and I'm really proud of what we did."
