Cruel, cruel are the twists of fate.
The cruel twists of the knee.
Richie Saunders was done in by both on Saturday, and inside of one second, his senior basketball season at BYU is over. Already, completely healthy, he was a questionable NBA prospect. What is he now, after a damaged ACL? What does his future hold? Will he take his NIL money, invest it, and go play in the Italian League?
Nobody knows.
One thing is certain: He’ll never play for BYU again.
But that brings up other questions about a Cougar team that was once supposed to be headed to the Final Four this season. Most of that is vapor now, and because it likely is, you have to wonder what thoughts are caroming around in AJ Dybantsa’s head.
Does he figure he’ll have to score 40 points a game from here on out? And that Rob Wright III will have to get 30? Who else on that team is capable of going off? Or even going … ho-hum … kind of average?
Nobody knows.
Or is AJ thinking, maybe that whole load management thing isn’t such a bad idea, maybe ducking on down and out a back alley isn’t the worst way to approach a promising NBA future, a future about which the only question is: Will he be taken first, second or third in the coming draft?
You can hear him thinking: If Richie can get hurt like that, what about me?
That’s a particular concern because of the way college referees seem to be satisfied and set on neglecting to call fouls when Dybantsa draws contact, which is pretty much every time down the floor. Some officials seem determined not to reward the exceptional talent just because he’s better than almost every defender or group of defenders who try to cover him. They usually can’t, so they rough him up. And when play gets rough, accidents and injuries happen.
Yeah, he’s getting paid his $5 or so million. As big as that number is, it’s a pittance of what he’ll make in the years ahead, as long as he isn’t busted to pieces in the meantime by guys who’ll never sniff the league and by referees who aren’t very good at their jobs.
Mix that with a general downtrend with the way BYU is playing at present, and you could see why the daubers are down, too. The Big Three is reduced to the Big Two, and basically no one else. Unless they excuse themselves, it’s all on Dybantsa and Wright. The Cougars have no bench. Kennard Davis has been a substantial disappointment. And Keba Keita … hello … Keba Keita? Where are you? When the ball is shot and bounces off the iron, and it spins temporarily suspended through the air, and you grab it, that’s called a rebound. Remember that? A rebound.
There have been other injuries, too, to players Kevin Young was counting on to contribute, but it’s a stretch to say that had Dawson Baker not wounded his wheel earlier in the year that the Cougars would be edging toward winning the Big 12. What’s gone wrong is bigger than just that. And now, it’s gigantic.
The defense has been sloppy, the overall vibe dour.
Is it ridiculous to suggest that BYU might not win another game this season? It might not.
Throw that up against the wall of great expectation for this team, not just of great expectation but also of great expenditure, and it’s a hammer to the head of even reasonable onlookers to see what is happening here.
It’s possible that Young could search the far reaches of his coaching mind to discover and retrieve some magical elixir to cure his team. But most coaches, even those who pull the best out of their players, confess that they are only as good as the talent they have available to them.
Dybantsa … check. Wright … check. Abdullah Ahmed … um. Mihailo Boskovic … um. Aleksej Kostic … um. Khadim Mboup … um. Tyler Mrus … um. Those last guys might be good dudes and all, they might lead the league in spellchecks, but are any of them really any good at basketball? Enough to give the two remaining stars a hand? Mboup is an athlete. Kostic hit that one big shot. Boskovic, with that easy grin on his face, looks like he’s having fun out there.
As for Keita, he appears to be hurt or distracted, something or other. Sources say he is, in fact, hurt.
The Cougars are 19-6 overall, 7-5 in an extremely rugged conference. It’s not like they’re dog meat. But there have been sniffs of an open can of Alpo around them in recent losses, what with Arizona this week on the road, Iowa State and UCF at home, West Virginia and Cincinnati on the road, and Texas Tech at home. God only knows how all that’s going to go.
The twists of fate can be cruel, the twists of a knee.
With all good wishes for Saunders moving forward, at this moment in the here and now, the most anticipated season in the history of BYU basketball is teetering, bound to be memorable for one of two reasons: for its immense letdown or for its remarkable bounce back.
Fate can twist either way, even if the knee cannot.