Final summer time, it seemed like Phoenix Suns assistant Kevin Younger was about to turn out to be an NBA head coach. A yr later, he is about to be heading to the faculty ranks.
Simply earlier than the Phoenix Suns employed Frank Vogel to interchange fired head coach Monty Williams, NBA pundit Invoice Simmons had repeatedly insisted Phoenix would rent Younger to be their new head coach.
Maybe Younger additionally believed this, since Phoenix shortly gave him a elevate that make the 42-year-old the league’s highest-paid assistant coach. Now, after former BYU coach Mark Pope left for the pinnacle job at Kentucky, Younger is ready to return to his hometown of Provo to teach the Cougars.
Younger has an in depth teaching historical past in Utah. He was an assistant coach at Utah Valley State School earlier than working as an assistant and later head coach of the G League’s Utah Flash. He additionally coached the identical franchise after they moved and have become the Delaware 87ers, the affiliate of the Philadelphia 76ers.
He is additionally a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a requirement for BYU head coaches (although not for assistants). All head teaching hires at BYU are topic to the approval of the Board of Training and Board of Trustees, which has quite a lot of overlap with prime church officers.
That could be why BYU was so aggressive in concentrating on Younger as a substitute, although he is clearly highly-regarded within the basketball world. Younger has interviewed for 4 totally different NBA head jobs, together with with the Suns final season.
It appears just like the Cougars are going to make an unimaginable rent. And Younger has deserted, or no less than postpone, his NBA goals in favor of an opportunity to construct his personal school program, which he’ll begin as soon as Phoenix’s playoff run ends. The NBA’s loss is BYU’s achieve.
