PROVO, Utah â Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dug a four-story hole along the foot of the Wasatch Mountains about a half-century ago. In that hole, they built an arena â a 22,000-seat temple, of sorts, that would stand as the largest on-campus facility in the United States. It would cover three acres and require a 2.5-million-pound roof requiring 38 hydraulic jacks to lift it over two weeks. Those Latter-day Saints knew of two things that could fill the place: the teachings of church founder Joseph Smith, and a Brigham Young University basketball team led by a Yugoslavian atheist named KreĹĄimir ÄosiÄ.
At a school steeped in divine heritage, this is a tradition of its own. ÄosiÄ was recruited to BYU in 1968 from what the Deseret News, a Latter-day Saints-owned Utah newspaper, refers to as âa theological wasteland of communist rule.â He was 6-foot-11 and played like Pete Maravich. In his first season, ÄosiÄ was one of at least three non-Mormons on the Cougarsâ 1970-71 team. By the time the J. Willard Marriott Center opened for the â71-72 season, he was a full-blown sensation. ÄosiÄ packed the new arena and brought attention to the school â exactly what he was recruited to do. Perhaps more importantly, he converted to the faith, later translating the Book of Mormon into Croatian and returning home to introduce the church to Yugoslavia.
âOne of the most legendary human beings, ever,â says Mark Pope, the Cougarsâ current head coach.
BYUâs ambitions in athletics have always been dictated, to a degree, by the talent outside its orthodoxy. How does the school find it? How does it fit? The dynamic is a constant curiosity at the lone Division I university owned and operated by the church, where roughly 98.5 percent of the schoolâs 32,000-student undergraduate enrollment is Mormon, where diversity is scant, and where all students must enroll in prerequisite religious courses and conform to an honor code that forbids sex, alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, profanity and anything resembling same-sex interests. Also, no beards.
Like a football program that for decades maintained national relevance with a high-octane passing attack, a reliable stream of Polynesian talent, and a roster of older, physically mature return missionaries, BYU menâs basketball has long done things its way. Itâs followed a pretty simple recipe: Land the best church member talent possible â the likes of Danny Ainge, Michael Smith, Jimmer Fredette, Tyler Haws, Yoeli Childs â identify a few non-member players who can fit in at the school, and fill out the roster with return missionaries. The results? BYU has made 30 NCAA Tournament trips, the most of any program without a Final Four appearance, and regularly ranks in the top 10 nationally in attendance.
Such results are infinitely small in the grander scheme, though. On-court success is required at BYU not for banners, but for the mission. As the school sees it, winning begets attention, attention begets interest, interest spreads the word. During a recent conversation in his office, university advancement vice president Keith Vorkink, who oversees BYU athletics, leaned forward to explain, âIt would be remarkable if people could understand how much interest there is from the leadership of our church in our athletic programs. Theyâre not thinking, letâs go win a championship because thatâs cool.â
That leadership might not roam the halls of the athletic department, but itâs ever-present. Latter-day Saints believe the president of their church is a living prophet, one who receives revelations from God. The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has final authority in all church matters.
Well underneath them all is a 51-year-old Pope, the one whoâs tasked to figure this all out.
How to be all things to all people, how to compose a program that many in the church still believe should primarily consist of church members, how to direct a program at a school that some outsiders paint as misguided and dated.
And, most urgently, how can Mark Pope and the Cougars accomplish this in a radical new world â amid contours dictated by name, image and likeness opportunities and transfer portal transactions, and as new members of college basketballâs best league, the Big 12.
This is not the same job Pope first accepted six years ago.
âWe wrestle with this,â Vorkink says. âWhen I visit with Mark, we say, âWe gotta live in the tension.â Thatâs how we describe it. We canât run from the tension.â
A few weeks into conference play, coming off a frustrating road loss at Texas Tech, and in the throes of preparation for a game against top-five Houston, Pope began a team video session by crossing one enormously long leg over the other and asking a question rarely heard in big-time collegiate athletics nowadays.
âOK,â Pope said, wide-eyed, âtell me something interesting you guys learned in school today.â
Roughly three decades after taking a yearlong Biblical Literature class at Washington, and courses on Islam after transferring to Kentucky, Pope still operates with this mobile curiosity of faith and education. He carried it through an NBA playing career that ended in 2005. He carried it when walking away from med school in 2009 to enter coaching. Pope climbed to an assistant position on legendary BYU coach Dave Roseâs staff from 2011 to 2015 before landing the head job at Utah Valley, six miles from Provo in Orem, Utah. He returned to BYU four seasons later to replace Rose, taking the Cougars to the first (and only) NCAA Tournament appearance of his tenure in 2021. Coaching at BYU, Pope says, requires âa concept of something bigger than yourself.â
From the back row, Aly Khalifa, a junior history major, said he was trying to decide between potential term paper subjects. The British colonization of Egypt or the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.
âHeavy stuff,â Pope said, nodding. âI like it.â
Khalifa grew up along the Mediterranean coast in Alexandria, Egypt. A promising young player following in his sisterâs footsteps, he was tabbed to participate in the NBA Global Academy in Australia as a teen. There, he drew the attention of U.S. college coaches, ultimately landing a scholarship to Charlotte. He played two seasons before entering the transfer portal.
âWhen BYU called, I knew nothing about Mormons, but I knew they were joining the Big 12,â Khalifa said recently. âThat was good enough for me.â
Khalifa is a pear-shaped 6-foot-11 center with slow feet and little lift. A bum knee requires surgery, but heâs opting to play through the season. He doesnât practice, occasionally misses playing time, and is admittedly out of shape. He is also spectacular. At its best, Popeâs ever-moving, ever-cutting, ever-shooting offense administers a long injection of novocaine. Then Khalifa makes a read and pulls the tooth. He is such a good passer that he ranks first among all Big 12 players in conference assist rate. The rest of the top 10 are guards measuring under 6 feet 4.
With Khalifa, you know the pass is coming, then watch as he makes it anyway. Folks in Provo have come to call him âPrince Alyâ and âThe Egyptian Magician,â which, in the year 2024, at a school thatâs more than 80 percent White, can raise an eyebrow. Pope pulled Khalifa aside early in the season to see if there was any unease. Khalifaâs feeling on it: âIâm used to it. Sometimes itâs cringey, but itâs fun.â
Pope attempted to ease Khalifaâs transition to BYU last summer by traveling to Egypt to meet his parents. Pope, a member of the church, had to decline when offered tea, but otherwise charmed his audience.
Khalifa emerged this season when fan favorite Fousseyni Traore battled knee and hamstring injuries. Traore was a second team all-conference selection last year in the Cougarsâ final West Coast Conference campaign. Heâs 6 feet 6, 250 pounds and plays with a cornered desperation. He dips his shoulder like heâs opening a jammed door and moves whateverâs on the other side. In a recent win at West Virginia, Traore scored most of his season-high 24 points over the outstretched arms of 6-foot-11 defensive specialist Jesse Edwards. In Provo, they yell âFoooooouss,â every time he muscles one in.
Traore is from Bamako, Mali. He is, as Pope put it, âeverything that we want our kids to aspire to be.â Now 22, Traore moved to the U.S. alone in 2018 with only a backpack. He lived with a Utah host family and enrolled at Wasatch Academy, a rural boarding school 60 miles south of Provo, not knowing, as he says, âanything or anybody.â He now speaks French, Bambara and English, and is pursuing a business degree. Pope speaks of Traore as the player whoâs too good to be true â posted up in a side room of the basketball office, sitting with an accounting tutor as the coaching staff leaves at 9 on a weeknight.
âWe donât understand what a dayâs work is compared to Fouss,â Pope says.
Pope traveled to Mali in the spring of 2022 to meet Traoreâs family. He returned alongside Traore that fall to meet with government officials in Bamako about creating a non-profit. The Minister of Land granted 20 acres of land near the airport to The Fouss Foundation for construction of a sports complex with three indoor courts and training facilities.
Pope did the same with Atiki Ally Atiki, flying alongside the 6-foot-10 forward for a trip this past summer from Salt Lake City, to Amsterdam, to Dubai and, finally, to Tanzania. It was Atikiâs first return visit since leaving home in 2017; back when, speaking only Swahili, he enrolled at the London Basketball Academy in London, Ontario, Canada. Using funds raised by a 501(c)(3) in his name, Atiki and Pope delivered laptops, shoes and basketballs to schools in Mwanza and Dar es Salaam. Kids swarmed Atiki and local news stations broadcast the visits. âI looked around, thinking it was a dream,â Atiki remembers.
The visit was also a chance for closure. In 2020, amid the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, Atikiâs father died while his son was 8,000 miles away in Canada. Atiki never said goodbye, never grieved with his family. So arriving in Mwanza, the first stop was an overgrown gravesite. There, Atiki fell to his knees, sobbing. He found a discarded garden spade and cleaned the headstone under an unrelenting morning sun. He âneeded to do my part, needed to pray, needed him to hear me.â
âBearing witness to that,â Pope now says, âwas sacred.â
Back at BYU, Atiki is in his third season as a reserve forward. He met a University of Utah student, Jenae, last year and was swept away. The wedding will be this June.
âThis guy wanted to play college basketball and found his way to BYU, of all places, and somehow it worked,â Pope says.
For Pope and his staff, of which two assistant coaches are non-church members, these arenât stories of progressive recruiting. Itâs simply building a team that can compete, by any means necessary.
Much of the BYU roster is, in fact, exactly what those who see BYU ranked in the AP Top 25 would expect. A collection of return missionaries who 1) are older and 2) shoot and pass with devout fundamentals. Of the 16 scholarship and non-scholarship players, nine served two-year missions for the church. Theyâre from Utah, and Idaho, and California. Four are married. Spencer Johnson and Trevin Knell, the teamâs second- and third-leading scorers, are 26 and 25 years old, respectively. Johnson, who arrived at BYU after stops at Weber State and Salt Lake Community College, is expecting his first child this month.
But thereâs also an unquestionable lack of convention here, at least by BYUâs standards. University chaplain James Slaughter, who interviews every incoming non-church member student, believes this to be the only team in school history (in any sport) with three Muslim players on the roster. The fit is a natural one, he says, as the honor code aligns closely with Islamic law.
But thereâs also senior high-major transfer Jaxson Robinson, the teamâs leading scorer, a Christian from Oklahoma with two previous stops at Texas A&M and Arkansas. Thereâs injured freshman high-major transfer Marcus Adams Jr., a non-church member, former top-50 recruit, who enrolled at Kansas and Gonzaga before opting for BYU.
Then thereâs Noah Waterman. The Cougarsâ leading rebounder and most versatile defender was home-schooled by a single mom as the youngest of nine kids in what he calls âa big hippie family.â Heâs from Savannah, N.Y., about 30 miles east of Palmyra, where 14-year-old Joseph Smith said he had a vision in 1820 and later published the Book of Mormon. But Waterman is Baptist.
âI didnât know what I was getting into coming out here, you feel me?â Waterman said late last month, perched in a seat in the Marriott Center.
After starting college at Niagara, Waterman landed at BYU via Detroit Mercy, which couldnât be any more different than Provo unless it were on the moon. He struggled, maybe bent some rules. The fit was âa disaster,â per Pope. Over the summer, though, things changed.
âIt took a while to buy in,â Waterman explains, âbut I found that focus. Itâs different here, but I needed it.â
That said, Waterman still has to be mindful. His alter ego, whom he calls âNew York Noah,â often wants to come out.
âHe wants to say whatâs on his mind,â Waterman says, âbut you canât do that here.â
BYUâs Jaxson Robinson and Atiki Ally Atiki celebrate at the Vegas Showdown on Nov. 24, 2023. (Jeff Speer / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
A little before 11 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, streams of BYU students and community members moved orderly along sidewalks and across the spiral ramp bridging the campus to the Marriott Center. Traffic around the arena slowed. Everyone stops at yellow lights in Provo.
The Marriott Center has been modernized over the years, now boasting the 10th-largest capacity in college basketball. It still plays dual roles. On this morning, a celestial blue carpet covered the floor and nearly all 18,987 seats filled for a devotional featuring Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The theme was âGodâs wondrous worksâ and Bednar told the gathered masses, âThere are no spiritual shortcuts or quick fixes.â Thousands upon thousands of students silently listened to the half-hour testimony, many jotting notes.
Meanwhile, the Houston basketball team used BYUâs practice gym â not the home teamâs arena â to prep for a 7 p.m. tipoff.
That night, the visitors would see no evidence of the devotional. Marriott Center was remade in a matter of hours into a jam-packed, rollicking college basketball venue.
There are certain quirks and contradictions that arise, major and minor, at the confluence of what BYU is and the world of big-time, big-money athletics. The dynamic now is becoming more dramatic than ever. In joining the Big 12, the school made the cut in conference realignmentâs great fissure between the haves and the have-nots. For BYU, itâs no more bantam leagues or independent status in football. The Cougars are now mainstream.
With that comes a different reality. No other power conference school is so tied to its ideology.
Vorkink regularly tells Pope he has the hardest task of anyone in college athletics. BYU basketball has had historical success, but typically as an unorthodox outsider. Being limited to a majority Latter-day Saints roster serves as an inherent ceiling and creates what Vorkink describes as âhistorical insecuritiesâ about whatâs possible. The Cougs have advanced to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament only once in the last 42 years. This season itâs playing potential NCAA Tournament teams night in and night out.
âMark has a brutal job,â Vorkink says the day after a tough loss to Houston. âHeâs a coach in the Big 12 and weâre asking him to do it a different way. There is an element that is like, weâre constraining him, weâre keeping him from just leaning into the way that people think about being successful in basketball. But we think thereâs a space for a successful program that doesnât do it like everyone else. Time will tell.â
Itâs difficult to visit Provo and not wonder how this new world wonât require more. Maybe more non-Latter-day Saints. Maybe more transfer portal pieces. More NIL money. More everything.
The current era already has taken BYU basketball places it probably never expected to be. Multiple Muslim players. Multiple transfers. There are only so many high-major quality recruits from the church. For decades BYU has clawed to compete with other schools for them (notably rival Utah) and waited out their two-year missions. Right now, Collin Chandler, who signed in November 2021 as the highest-rated recruit in program history, is in London, England. How tenable is such a waiting game in a portal-driven era thatâs thrown roster planning out the window?
In February 2022, Pope sent out a lineup with no Latter-day Saints among the starters for the first time in school history, drawing local headlines. In doing so, he also for the first time fielded a lineup with four Black players at a school that didnât have a Black basketball player until 1974.
Maybe the program can go even further. It might have to, but that could defeat the real purpose here. Going all-in on sports is a great marketing play for the faith, but not if it conflicts with a divine mission.
âWith our leadership, thereâs absolutely awareness of whatâs at stake, and I think thereâs hope, but wariness,â Vorkink says. âThe reality is, if things move so far in a certain direction, weâre out. We have to be able to achieve our objectives in order to be in athletics.â
Pope, for his part, is a believer. Sitting in an office that affords a clear view of the Wasatch Mountains, he says he thinks BYU can create a team that serves both the school and the sport in perfect symmetry. âIt might sound like those canât coexist,â he notes, âbut they have to coexist.â
And when they do, he adds, it will be beautiful. It will be what itâs supposed to be. It will be something bigger.
And, God willing, it will win.
(Illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Chris Gardner, William Mancebo / Getty Images)