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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — To sum up his feelings over being picked 13th out of 14 teams in the Big 12 men's basketball preseason coaches poll, BYU coach Mark Pope turned toward the legend that is Miss Taylor Alison (Swift, that is).
"I was super excited about the 13th pick," Pope said during the Big 12 Tipoff media days in Kansas City. "I have four daughters, and we managed to make it to a couple of Taylor Swift concerts this year. Her favorite number is 13, and I think that bodes well for BYU basketball this season. We're really excited about that."
Asked later about the reference, BYU wing Spencer Johnson quipped without missing a beat: "Well, we are in Kansas City."
As BYU enters its Big 12 era, preseason projections have not been kind to the Cougars since joining what most argue is the best college basketball conference in America. Finishing higher may be Pope's wildest dream, but early prognostications involve a cruel summer for BYU.
Maybe it's still football season, or maybe it's pessimism following the Cougars' 19-15 campaign in 2022-23, including a 7-9 record in BYU's final run through the West Coast Conference, that is dragging down those preseason expectations.
Maybe it's realism, too. But it's certainly real now, as Pope sat between Oklahoma State's Mike Boynton and Iowa State's T.J. Otzelbeger, while Baylor's Scott Drew and Kansas State's Jerome Tang held court a few yards away.
"It actually feels real now," BYU forward Fousseyni Traore said. "When we got the jerseys with the Big 12 and all that. It's go-time. It's all hype. We're just excited to compete. It's going to be fun."
That Big 12 logo looks real good in royal blue 🤧 pic.twitter.com/7DRjaBK9JO
— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) October 18, 2023
There's also excitement. Ticket demand has been as high as ever — Pope said the athletic department sold out its allotment of season tickets before they went to the general public — and the Cougars regularly drew over 15,000 fans to those same WCC games a year ago before joining the best attended conference in the country.
Bringing in teams like Kansas, Houston, Baylor and Texas — to name the teams ranked in the preseason Top 25 by the Associated Press — will only help as the Cougars adjust to life in the conference that ranked first nationally in the NET or RPI in seven of the last 10 years.
The Jayhawks were picked to win the league and awarded the No. 1 preseason ranking by the AP. But the depth of talent in the Big 12 goes well beyond that, with four AP Top 25 teams tied for the second-most in the country (the SEC has five).
Five of the league's teams are rated in the top 25 by KenPom in the preseason, and each team rates in the top 75 of the predictive metric. BYU is 36th, which ranks eighth in the Big 12 based primarily on returning close to 70% of its scoring from a year ago with Traore, Dallin Hall, Spencer Johnson and Jaxson Robinson.
"I think the pressure is always there. If you're running from pressure, you shouldn't be in athletics," Pope said. "Actually we love it. ... I think you're pressured picked at 13 and pressure picked at one and pressure picked everywhere. But certainly we are very humble moving into this league, but we're very confidence, also, and we're coming in here to compete and grow into winning, and we're really excited about that."
The Cougars brought back all but a handful of players from last year's 19-15 squad that finished 7-9 in their final season in the WCC. That includes five starters as well as sharpshooter Trevin Knell, who missed the entire 2022-23 season after shoulder surgery after shooting 40.6% from the field in 2021-22.
"He brings a lot of things to the table. Shooting is what he's known for, a shot doctor who can shoot the cover off the ball," Hall said of Knell. "But with that comes spacing; guys can't help off as much, and that could cause fits for the defense. He's also a really good cutter, which doesn't get talked enough about him. … We're a lot more dynamic, but I think his leadership will be really big for us. His voice in the huddle is going to be super important for us going forward."
The hope, of course, is adding only a few tweaks will push BYU back up. They brought in Aly Khalifa from Charlotte, whom Pope calls the best passing big man in the country, as well as former UC Irvine walking bucket Dawson Baker.
They also got a boost from the late addition of Marcus Adams Jr., a top-50 prospect nationally who would be the biggest recruit in at least a decade for BYU if he is ruled eligible by the NCAA after first signing with Kansas and Gonzaga.
"Marcus is doing an unbelievable job," Pope said. "He's working really hard, kind of finding his way academically and getting healthy, and we're really excited to have him. We won't know about his eligibility this season for a while. That's in process. But we're certainly hopeful."
The NCAA has been cracking down on transfer waivers lately. Earlier Wednesday, Cincinnati coach Wes Miller told reporters that former Utah Valley center Aziz Bandaogo was initially denied his eligibility after the two-time transfer enrolled with his program. The Bearcats will appeal, he added.
For BYU, the hope is that team chemistry and a veteran group — with a couple of portal additions — will keep the Cougars adrift in, as commissioner Brett Yormark called it Tuesday, the best basketball conference in America.
"Big 12 basketball is special, and will continue to be special with the conference additions and what the commissioner and ADs were able to do for the future of the Big 12," Baylor coach Scott Drew said.
