New BYU basketball assistant coach Tim Fanning on how the Cougars landed Egor Demin, Kanon Catchings, and how they are doing in Provo

Since he became BYU’s new men’s basketball coach on April 16, Kevin Young has rocked the college basketball world with some of the best recruiting ever seen in Provo , in addition to retaining many of the key ingredients from Mark Pope’s 2023-24 squad that tied for fifth with Kansas in the Big 12.

Young flipped Corner Canyon star and four-star recruit Brody Kozlowski from USC, lured Keba Keita and Mawot Mag out of the transfer portal from Utah and Rutgers , respectively, and got point guard Elijah Crawford, who had originally committed to Stanford.

He made the biggest splashes, however, by signing international star Egor Demin and four-star high school forward Kanon Catchings, a one-time Purdue commit.

While Young has received a lot of credit for building BYU’s 2024-25 roster, the work of his assistant coaches cannot be overlooked, the former Phoenix Suns assistant said when he met with reporters on June 6.

“It was a process to make sure we got the right people in here, and we went through a pretty good vetting process,” Young said. “Obviously, I had a relationship with the majority of them, and then using some of the administration here to vet these guys with me, we put it all together.”

One of those guys Young had an existing relationship with is Tim Fanning, who was the fourth assistant coach added to the staff . Although he spent the lsat three seasons coaching at Overtime Elite, a basketball league for 16-to-20-year-olds, Fanning has had an extensive career coaching overseas and has known Young since they worked together in the NBA’s G League in 2013 and 2014.

“From there we just maintained our friendship,” Fanning told the Deseret News last week. “We connected pretty much every summer at the NBA Summer League. We would go eat together and then sit and watch film and I would kinda share some stuff with him that was happening in Europe. And then he would share some stuff that they were doing in the NBA.”

Fanning and Young spoke a lot earlier this year because the Suns were forming a G League team — now known as the Valley Suns — and Fanning wanted to get his name in the mix for the head coaching position.

“So we were already in communication about that and then he got the job here at BYU and it kind of was a pretty natural evolution and I ended up joining him here,” Fanning said.

Fanning’s hiring was announced on June 4, a week or so after the Russian Demin committed to BYU, but Fanning still played a big role in getting Demin to stay true to his commitment and sign on June 17. Of course, Fanning played a huge role in getting Catchings to BYU because he coached the phenom at Overtime Elite and has had a long-standing relationship with the ESPN No. 35 recruit and his family.

‘Hyper-focused on getting to the NBA’

While quickly reporting that landing Demin and Catchings was a “team effort” that involved not only the basketball staff but the entire athletic department and several school administrators, in addition to its NIL collective, Fanning agreed recently to describe how BYU was able to get two of the highest-ranked recruits in program history to Provo.

Bottom line, Fanning said, is that both prospects consider themselves “one-and-done” players who will compete in college basketball for one season and then enter the 2025 NBA draft.

“At the end of the day, both of those guys felt like, and I think feel like, BYU was the best place basketball-wise and culture-wise to help them have a career in the NBA,” Fanning said. “That is basically what it came down to.”

The Cougars practiced for four straight weeks in June, took the week of the 4th of July off, and wrapped up their sixth week of workouts with coaches on Friday (July 19).

“I think they are both doing great. They have been with us for three or four weeks, each of them,” Fanning said. “And I think they are getting acclimated to Utah. I think they are getting acclimated to their teammates. Everything is going well. All indications are that things are going wonderful so far. … They are hyper-focused on getting to the NBA, and we believe we can help them with that.”

Demin wanted a place with no distractions

A 6-foot-9 playmaker from Moscow, Russia, Demin appeared in 21 games for Real Madrid 2 during the 2023-24 Spain EBA season, and averaged 13 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game.

“A key point for Egor is getting to the NBA, obviously,” Fanning said. “I think this environment that didn’t have a lot of distractions was very important to him.

“And then I think the professional pedigree of our coaching staff — obviously starting with Kevin, his experience working with multi-faceted guards like Devin Booker, like Kevin Durant, like Ben Simmons — the really different player profiles, and Kevin’s success helping those guys be great, I think that was very attractive to Egor,” Fanning continued.

Fanning said his experience coaching internationally in Israel and New Zealand, particularly, helped in the recruitment of Demin.

“Any time you are crossing waters to go play basketball, there are going to be some cultural differences. There are going to be some basketball differences. And so I think that having done that recently, and then having worked with players who have also done that — with Alex Saar and Izan Almansa at Overtime — who came from Real Madrid to the United States, I was able to communicate and anticipate some of those challenges that are on the road ahead for Egor and hopefully help him navigate those more effectively than anyone else,” Fanning said.

The Washington Wizards selected Sarr with the No. 2 overall pick of last month’s NBA draft; Almansa was projected to be a middle first-round pick but withdrew from the draft and is exploring other professional opportunities.

“The simple fact that I have a lot of familiarity with going both directions to and from Europe as a coach and the recency of working with players coming from Europe to the states, I think that those were attractive things for Egor,” Fanning said. “It is something that you have to feel, and I think Egor felt that. … There are people on staff that have gone from one side of the world to the other for basketball. So yeah, it absolutely helped us (get Demin).”

Catchings comes with big-time credentials

A 6-foot-9 forward, Catchings became the third member of the ESPN 100 to sign with BYU, joining Crawford and Kozlowski. He is the highest-ranked recruit in program history, according to 247sports.com .

Playing for OTE’s Cold Hearts, he averaged 14.4 points and 5.7 rebounds per game in the regular season. He averaged 17.5 points and 4.8 rebounds per game as a junior at Brownsburg High School in Indiana.

“So we got wind that he had decommitted from Purdue. After that, I just reached out to his mom, basically. I had an existing relationship with her from when I was at Overtime Elite. And then from there, it just kinda evolved,” Fanning said, noting that he had a 15-minute chat with Catchings’ mother, Tauja, before they got around to talking about basketball and Kanon’s recruitment.

“Then I told her I was at BYU, and she was kinda like, ‘What is BYU?’” Fanning said. “Then we got on a Zoom call, and we presented everything from kind of a bird’s-eye view and then after that they came out for a visit and it went pretty smoothly.”

Fanning said BYU’s uniqueness, including its honor code, “was a key point” in Catchings’ recruitment and one of the biggest reasons why he picked a school with a lesser basketball pedigree than some of the others that were recruiting him.

“I think Kanon is a guy who didn’t want a lot of distractions around him,” Fanning said. “I think that was actually a strong point that we had. I think that was one of the reasons why the recruitment was so smooth. You know, Kanon is kind of a quiet, keep-to-himself, person. I think that was very attractive to him.”