In the last couple of weeks, I talked about the certain players that BYU basketball was looking at to fill out their team as they have lost coaches, recruits, and current players. We have some recent commits to talk about and where BYU could look next.

4 Star Recruit Elijah Crawford Commits

Elijah Crawford, a 4 star recruit and ranked 98th in ESPN’s top 100 recruits for basketball, committed to BYU yesterday. That is big news. Crawford was initially committed to Stanford. But after coaching changes, he decommitted and was looking at other schools. One of the big recruiters, at the time for Crawford, was assistant coach Brandon Dunson. He left Stanford and recently became an assistant coach at BYU. As soon as he landed the job with BYU, he started recruiting Crawford hard again, this time to join him in Provo. Crawford only had one official visit scheduled after he decommitted from Stanford, and it was to BYU.

BYU 2024 Class

Crawford, now joins newly committed Brody Kozlowski, and Brooks Bahr in the 2024 class so far. Bahr will most likely serve a mission first before he joins the program. But getting Kozlowski and Crawford to join the program this year is huge. Crawford will immediately compete for minutes. I can see him being the backup PG behind Dallin Hall or even starting next to Hall in the other guard position. Crawford is only 6’2 so I could see Crawford being the PG and Hall being the SG.

Crawford was named the maxpreps.com New Hampshire player of the year this last year and helped his team finish 27-7 and 4th in the #1 rated league in high school basketball in the US. This last year he averaged 12 points, 4 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals per game while shooting 40% from 3 and 90% from the FT line.

New Doors Open

When Collin Chandler committed to Kentucky, after being the highest rated recruit ever for BYU, that decommittment has now opened up some new doors for BYU. We have now been able to land Kozlowski and Crawford and BYU is not done.

They currently have 4 more scholarships available and 2-3 coaching positions still open. It is time to start getting excited for BYU Basketball again! Crawford is the 7th highest recruit to ever join BYU and Kozlowski is the 5th highest. We havent had an ESPN top 100 recruit commit to BYU since 2016 and we havent had 2 from the top 100 since 2014. Look at the list here.

• 2024
  • Brody Kozlowski – #94
  • Elijah Crawford – #98
• 2016
  • Yoeli Childs – #54
• 2014
  • TJ Haws – #51
  • Payton Dastrup – #95
• 2013
  • Eric Mika – #28
  • Nick Emery – #45

This is some pretty exciting stuff for BYU basketball this year. For Coach Young to keep the momentum going from last year is huge, and it looks like hes doing a great job at it so far. Lastly, according to 247 Sports, BYU is now 24th in their freshman composite rankings for basketball. That is crazy. Sadly, with how good of a basketball conference the Big 12 is, that only puts us at 6th in the conference, but its still a great position. If youre also interested as to where Mark Pope and Kentucky are, you can check on that link above for the top rankings. Kentucky is currently 39th.

I had never heard BYU be in the top 25 for basketball recruiting. So I looked it up. Since 247 sports started ranking recruits in 1999, BYU has only ranked in the top 25 for basketball twice before this year, in 2006 and 2013.

Other Recruiting News

Now BYU will shift their focus to the last 4 scholarships they have. We already know that BYU has 3 guys at the top of their list. Chaz Lanier, Berke Buyuktuncel, and Maxim Logue.

Chaz Lanier is similar to Jaxson Robinson and would be a huge get for BYU. He just took his last visit to Tennessee after visiting BYU and Kentucky. There are rumors flying around that he has committed to Tennessee, but time will tell.

Berke Buyuktuncel is a more athletic and skilled but not as good of a shooter Noah Waterman. He just took his last visit to Nebraska and there are rumors there that he has committed to Nebraska. That would be a big blow to BYU. If BYU strikes out on both of Lanier and Buyuktuncel, thats a big blow.

Their last focus is Maxim Logue. He is a recruit and would be a freshman next year. Logue is a wing player and super duper athletic. He isnt taking any more visits and BYU was his last. So we should hear more news soon but no rumors for him.

BYU Football News

In some other BYU football news, BYU has landed a transfer from Colorado, Isaiah Jatta, He is a big OT at 6’6, 300 pounds. BYU beat out USC for him. Jatta has a lot of potential and is super raw. He has 2 years left to play his final eligible year. Jatta just needs to develop. He has great athleticism and is a great pass blocker. He will now compete to win one of the starting OT positions this year.

Caleb Etienne is the projected starter right now, but he was up and down last year. So BYU felt like they needed some more depth. Jatta can easily step in and take the position over Etienne if he puts all of the pieces together leading up to the season.

Thank you for reading! You can check out my other previous posts here. Please share with your family and friends!