PROVO, Utah – BYU men’s basketball’s Brandon Dunson, Chris Burgess and Tim Fanning were named as three of the Top 100 High Major Assistant Coaches by Silver Waves Media on Wednesday.
The trio has been part of Kevin Young’s staff from the beginning helping the Cougars win 49 games and advance to the NCAA Tournament in each of Young’s first two seasons in Provo.
During that same timeframe, BYU is one of two schools in the country with lottery picks in back-to-back drafts with Egor Dëmin going to the Brooklyn Nets with the 8th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft and AJ Dybantsa going No. 1 to the Washington Wizards in June. Former Big 12 Most Improved Player of the Year Richie Saunders was also drafted with the 32nd overall pick by the Memphis Grizzlies.
The Cougars went 23-12 in 2025-26 including a pair of wins over Top 10 opponents after Saunders went down with a season-ending injury. After falling by two to national runner-up UConn in Boston, BYU rolled off 13 straight wins including a 28-point victory over No. 23 Wisconsin, Robert Wright III’s buzzer beater at Madison Square Garden and victories over Miami and Dayton to win the Terry’s Chocolate ESPN Events Invitational in Orlando.
Dybantsa was named the best small forward in college basketball after leading the nation in scoring at 25.5 points per game. The consensus First Team All-American scored in double figures in all 35 games as a Cougar including 28 games with 20-plus, eight 30-point performances and a BYU freshman record 43 points in a win over Utah.
BYU returned to the Sweet 16 for the first time in more than a decade in 2024-25 when the Cougars won their final eight games of the regular season including ranked road wins over No. 19 Arizona and No. 10 Iowa State. They went on to defeat VCU in Round of 64 and No. 13 Wisconsin two days later to advance to the second weekend for the first time since Jimmermania took over the nation.
Saunders averaged a team-high 16.5 points per game while becoming the fifth player in program history to shoot 50/40/80 in a single season. He was even better in the Cougars run to the Sweet 16 averaging 22.0 points and 5.7 rebounds per game while shooting 59.5 percent from the field, 41.7 percent from three and 100.0 percent from the free throw line.
BYU opens the 2026-27 season on Monday, Nov. 2, when the Cougars take on Ohio State at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.