‘I thought basketball was over for good’: Brody Kozlowski’s ride to BYU full of twists, turns and a painful break

Not everyone remembers where they were after sundown last Nov. 15, but Brody Kozlowski does. A traffic accident left the most-prized high school basketball product in the state of Utah lying flat on his back in the middle of the road on 700 East in Draper with a sharp pain shooting through his shoulder.

“My mind was going everywhere,” Kozlowski recalls.

His teenage thoughts raced from the anguish of the immediate situation to a test he had to study for, to the perceived trouble he was going to be in with his parents. As for his beloved sport, including the scholarship waiting for him at USC, “I thought basketball was over for good.”

In the moment, that included a flurry of flashing lights from emergency vehicles, it was impossible for the bewildered Corner Canyon High big man to know how the small twists and turns in the minutes, days, weeks and months ahead would alter his path and point him to Provo.

The family saga started with a phone call from a Good Samaritan.

A stranger’s voice

The Kozlowskis are the epitome of an athletic family. Father Travis (football) and mother Kristen (basketball) both competed at BYU. Travis’ dad (Richard) and uncle (Glen) also played football for the Cougars. When it comes to their five kids, if it’s not a game night they are probably at practice.

On this typical Wednesday, Brody had just finished a team workout at Corner Canyon. Travis was in Orem watching 10-year-old Rosco play basketball. Kristen was at BYUtv in Provo working her studio job as an analyst ahead of the BYU-Southeastern Louisiana men’s game.

This is how they roll.

However, the seemingly normal night turned abnormal when Travis received a call. It was from Brody’s phone – but it wasn’t Brody.

“Hey, is this Brody’s dad?” said a stranger’s voice.

“Yes” said Travis.

“There has been an accident.”

Initially, Travis suspected that one of Brody’s friends was playing a prank and the noise in the gym made it difficult to hear.

“Stop messing around. What do you need?” Travis asked.

“No,” the man said, “I’m calling from your son’s phone. He’s been in an accident.”

“Is he OK? Can I talk to him?” Travis told the voice on the other end of the line. The man, who had stopped at the scene to offer help, handed the phone to Brody, who was lying in the road waiting for emergency crews. He had exited the vehicle, but the immense pain took him to the ground.

“Son, are you all right?”

“No, my shoulder is hurt,” Brody said. “Dad, I’m sorry. The truck is wrecked.”

“Son, I don’t care about the car.”

Travis stayed on the phone with Brody until he could give the paramedics permission to transport him to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray with a severely broken collar bone.

Then he sent Kristen a text.

“Brody has been in an accident. They are taking him to IMC.”

Kristen received the message during the BYUtv pregame show.

“We weren’t on camera when I saw it,” she said. “I looked up at Jarom (Jordan) and I almost lost it.”

“Everything OK?” asked Jordan, the show host.

“No, Brody has been in an accident! They said, ‘Go, we’ll take care of this,’” said Kristen. “I grabbed my stuff and headed out and called Travis.”

As thousands filed into the Marriott Center parking lot, the anxious mother hurried in the opposite direction to get to an emergency room 40 minutes away.

Dream season

“I went over to their house (the next day) and (Brody) was sitting at the table,” said Corner Canyon head basketball coach Dan Lunt. “We just talked. He gave that little smile. There was not a lot to say. We were just grateful the kid was alive and doing all right.”

As a junior, the 6-foot-8 power forward led the Chargers to the 2023 state championship and earned honors as Utah’s Max Preps Player of the Year and 6A Player of the Year. In addition, Brody’s productive summer on the AAU circuit had his recruiting stock skyrocketing.

“The biggest thing about Brody, the biggest positive about him, is he has his head on straight,” Lunt said. “I knew the basketball portion would take care of itself. I was just hoping he would be given the opportunity to return before the season ended.”

Lunt had two reasons for concern. Not only was he deeply invested in his player’s life as a coach and mentor, but he had just finished putting a national schedule together to showcase Brody’s skills and challenge the team like never before — and opening night was just five days away.

“I’m doing research, asking questions, and trying to figure out how long does it take to heal?” Lunt said. “At the same time, I’m planning on a worst-case scenario for his return and hoping for the best.”

Brody was in surgery the following morning to put his left collar bone back together. Repair work for the complete break required the installation of a plate and eight screws.

Recover and return

Describing the pain as “above a 10 out of 10,” Brody set course on a difficult recovery. While the physical therapy was arduous and uncomfortable, watching his team struggle without him was far worse.

“It was very tough, and it put me into a depressed state,” Brody said. With support from his family and friends, he waded through the process.

“I think it was an awakening for him,” Kristen said. “A lot of his identity is associated with basketball and that was ripped away in that moment. It was hard physically, but it was much harder mentally for him.”

Two-and-a-half months into his final season of high school basketball, on Jan. 19, Brody received some good news. Doctors cleared him to rejoin the team. His collar bone wasn’t completely healed, but they determined it was safe from further damage and that was good enough for Brody.

“That was the most nervous I had ever been,” Brody said as Corner Canyon took the floor against Copper Hills. “I was worried about how I would play.”

He wasn’t alone. Travis and Kristen were up in the stands giving each other oxygen.

“I reminded him, ‘You have been out, you are not going to be where you were before the accident,” said Travis. “Just keep doing what you can to help your team win.”

Brody had his collar bone tested just seconds into the game.

“He attacked the basket and they body-checked him,” Kristen said. “I think I held my breath, thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, here we go!’”

Albeit rusty, his teammates were so happy to have him back they gave him an unencumbered green light. As Kristen remembered, “His team gathered around him and said, ‘We don’t care if you miss, just keep shooting.’”

Brody shot early and often. He only connected on 1 of 10 3-pointers, but he did enough of everything else to finish with 29 points and 16 rebounds. Corner Canyon won the game, 68-47.

“When he came back, the demeanor of everything and everybody on the team changed with the excitement that he brings,” Lunt said. “Just his presence on the floor. You have to know where he’s at. One of the biggest things Brody does to change the game is his ability to see open people and pass the ball and find them in scoring position. He’s extremely unselfish.”

As Brody improved each night, the Chargers rolled off 12 straight victories until falling to Lehi in the 6A state championship game. Even with the shortened season, the Corner Canyon valedictorian was again named Utah’s 6A Player of the Year and USC couldn’t wait to get him to Los Angeles.

Coaching changes

Picking a college program that wasn’t BYU for a generational BYU family speaks volumes as to how USC’s Andy Enfield outrecruited the Cougars and everybody else for Brody’s trust. But when Enfield cut his own ties to the Trojans and left for the SMU job on April 1, Brody asked USC to release him from his scholarship, and he started to look around.

“I was stressed out about having to go through the process again of trying to find where my home was going to be and who the right coach was for me,” he said. “It was a weird situation.”

Enfield’s curveball caught everybody by surprise.

“It was an interesting thing for both Kristen and me,” Travis said. “In our heart of hearts, he’s our first child and when we had him, we always thought he would go to BYU, but we genuinely wanted him to pick the place that was right for him. So, we had shifted gears to USC, and we were all-in.”

Back on the open market, the suitors came quickly, including Michigan, Ole Miss, Penn State, Stanford, Saint Mary’s and Enfield’s new program at SMU. BYU was still in the mix, but the Cougars had their own changes to deal with after Mark Pope left for the Kentucky job on April 12.

Enter Kevin Young

On Nov. 15, while Brody was lying in the road on 700 East, Kevin Young was sitting on the bench in Phoenix coaching the Suns to a 133-115 victory against Minnesota. They were not only complete strangers, but the idea of going to BYU wasn’t on the docket for either one of them.

Everything changed in mid-April when the Cougars hired Young and his first call was to Brody at the prodding of Brandon Dunson, a former Stanford assistant coach who joined Young’s staff at BYU. Dunson had recruited Brody while with the Cardinal.

“Coach Young reached out immediately, even before he was announced, and that said a lot about Brody being a priority,” Kristen said. “He reached out to both Travis and me, and Brody. He felt genuine from day one.”

Young met with the family in the basketball office for an hour on April 26 following his official introduction at the Marriott Center.

“I thought he was a really cool coach,” Brody said. “He was super chill and straight forward about what he saw in me and what he believed I could do in college and as a pro.”

For two people who had been worlds apart just days before, it only took a few words to close the gap.

“Kevin looked at Brody and said, ‘We are in the same boat. About a week ago you were going to USC, and I was staying in the NBA — but here we are,’” Kristen said. “That was a bonding, pivotal point for Brody.”

Even after the impressive meet-and-greet, and additional exchanges with the likes of BYU alums Danny Ainge, Eric Mica, Tyler Haws, Jimmer Fredette and Ryan Smith, the Kozlowskis took recruiting visits to SMU and Stanford.

On the morning of the Stanford visit, on April 28, Travis and Kristen waited for Brody in the hotel lobby before going to breakfast. The Suns were hosting the Timberwolves later that day in the NBA playoffs. Young had agreed with Pheonix to finish out the postseason in his role as associate head coach before shifting everything to Provo.

“I said to Travis, ‘How cool would it be for Coach Young to reach out to Brody on the day of his playoff game?” Kristen said. “A few minutes later, Brody came down from his room and said, ‘I just got off the phone with Coach Young!’”

“I was pretty surprised. I didn’t expect him to call with a playoff game that night.”

Brody Kosklowski on getting call from BYU coach Kevin Young

Young called to make sure Brody had received his official offer from BYU and reemphasized his desire to have him on the team.

“I was pretty surprised,” Brody said. “I didn’t expect him to call with a playoff game that night.”

After breakfast, the Kozlowskis spent Sunday at Stanford. The family was impressed with what the Cardinal had to offer, but Brody’s heart had already shifted. He spent the flight back to Utah visualizing playing for Young in the BYU environment, including a sold-out Marriott Center with thousands of new friends going nuts in the ROC (student section).

“BYU just felt perfect for me,” he said.

Later that night, Brody “walked into the room and informed us that he called the coach and committed to BYU,” said Travis. “When it circled back and he was going to BYU, all those thoughts you had when raising him that he could play here someday came back and to have that become a reality is really fun.”

Brody had found his home.

Chapter one

With ESPN’s Top 100 ranking of No. 94, accompanied by four recruiting stars, Brody announced his intentions to play at BYU on social media. He may have been Young’s first recruit to Provo, but the coach has since filled the roster with high-profile kids just like him. The fight for playing time will be fierce.

“It’s super intense and competitive each day,” Brody said. “We are pushing each other to get better. I’m in a great spot. I’m surrounded by great people who have the same goals and who want to reach the same thing — which is a championship.”

With an abundance of talent, Young’s rotation will likely remain a work in progress for a while. Everybody has a skill to contribute, including the teen dynamo from Draper.

“I would be very surprised if Brody doesn’t play himself into minutes this year,” Lunt said. “To me, a great player makes the people around him better and he does that. He elevates everybody around him.”

With practice and school underway at BYU, Brody is settling into his new world as one of 35,000 students on campus. His body is mended, and his mind is right, but he is not the same. Those dark moments last November, lying in the middle of the road with a sharp pain shooting through his shoulder changed him.

“I think it taught me to cherish every moment and be grateful for everything in my life,” Brody said. “It made me realize that I’m very blessed to go to college. I’m blessed to have a family and community that loves and supports me. My perspective has changed about all that — big time.”

Brody’s story is just getting started. The 18 years leading up to his freshman season at BYU is just the preface for all the unwritten pages ahead. As far as basketball goes, chapter one begins on Nov. 5 against Central Arkansas.

Tipoff will come just a few days to the year when a stranger’s voice on Brody’s phone alerted Travis to an accident that set off a chain of events the Kozlowskis will never forget.

Brody carries an additional reminder wherever he goes. The plate and eight screws that remain in his shoulder are the lingering evidence of how quickly a life can change.

Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com .