Struggling to envision the future of pay-for-play college basketball?

Watch how BYU operates. You won’t have to squint. The Cougars are one big, bad blueprint.

Hours before coach Kevin Young debuted in the NCAA Tournament with No. 6 BYU’s 80-71 win over No. 11 VCU at Ball Arena, college ball’s 43-year-old outlier explained to me his intentions as the first-year coach at BYU.

“We literally try to run this like an NBA team,” Young said. “Mostly since that’s what I know.”

When BYU last year hired Young, he had not coached a college game since 2005 at Utah Valley. It will turn out to be the smartest high-major hire in college ball in years.

Young spent the past two decades in the pros — from the G League to associate head coach with the Phoenix Suns, from where he still has “nightmares of guarding (Nikola) Jokic.”

His Suns swept the Nuggets in the playoffs, when Jokic was ejected at the end of Game 4. And Young was a part of the Suns staff when Jokic remembered the previous sweep and steamrolled the Suns on a power trip to the Nuggets’ NBA championship in 2023.

“He’s impossible to guard,” Young said. “I can say that now.”

Suns star Chris Paul and others lobbied for Young to be the head coach in Phoenix. Instead, he went home to Utah with all the methods he utilized with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.

There was some consternation in Provo when Mark Pope left for Kentucky. The Cougars got better with Young. BYU’s win Thursday in front of Cougars icons Jimmer Fredette, Taysom Hill and Danny Ainge gave the Cougars 25 wins, a program record for a first-year coach. It was also BYU’s first tournament win in 13 years.

It’s only going up from here.

The notion we’re watching student-athletes in the NCAA Tournament makes for a cute story. But when 19-year-olds are scoring $1 million NIL deals to spend seven months on campus, it’s as outdated as John Stockton’s shorts. BYU already signed the nation’s No. 1 prospect in the 2025 recruiting class. AJ Dybantsa reportedly inked for $7 million.

“You’re not going to outbid us,” a BYU booster told ESPN.com in a January report.

But the program’s NBA model extends far beyond its deep pockets. The Cougars also hired nutritionist Danielle LaFata away from the Suns and Mercury, where she served as the director of their nutrition programs. She won a World Series with the San Francisco Giants.

Player development is headed by Jordan Brady, a longtime ace in the NBA G League. The Cougars game plan through a close study of advanced analytics. Their recruiting goes through agents — not AAU or high school coaches. Young already knew the agents.

“We’ve collaborated to keep the NBA front-office scheme to the NBA style of play,” said chief of staff Doug Stewart, who knew Young from his own time in the G League. “Then you blend it with the strategies of college basketball. (We) try to go top to bottom with the NBA model.”

Stewart’s coaching life got its start at beautiful Casper (Wyo.) College in the early 2000s.

What BYU’s doing is a long way from bus rides through junior college ball and Region IX.

“It’s smart, though,” Stewart said. “And you look around our locker room and this is a no-maintenance group. You don’t have to fight guys to play hard.”

Ask VCU, which owns a reputation as one of the tougher programs on the east coast. Nevertheless, No. 6 BYU did something you don’t often see against a VCU team.

The Cougars broke the Rams’ will with a 40-minute assault of physical play. Tired of getting beat up, VCU resorted to launching 38 3-pointers, another form of waving a white flag. No. 6 BYU was never really challenged and advanced to face No. 3 Wisconsin.

Best wishes finding an affordable ticket on Saturday. BYU and Wisconsin fans share a few things in common. They’ve never seen their team commit a foul and both travel in droves.

“This felt like the Marriott Center (in Provo),” BYU guard Egor Demin said.

Get used to seeing Demin at Ball Arena. The 19-year-old from Russia is the embodiment of the NBA model and soon will find himself as a top-10 pick in the 2025 draft.

“Our team is never really like robots,” Demin said. “People can find a way how to score. If a team closes one door, we can find a window.”

Six countries are repped on BYU’s roster: the U.S., Australia, Russia, Serbia, Senegal, Mali.

“There is a good togetherness that helps us,” said Keba Keita, a mountain of a man from Mali, who is listed at 6-foot-8, 230 pounds but could double as the Broncos’ next tight end.

Is the transition to a professional model good for the overall health of college ball? Depends if you’re a BYU fan, or another heavyweight that won’t be outbid. But it’s not for nothing the lower-seeded teams at Ball Arena had no chance in the first round. Montana, VCU and Yale were blitzed by an average of 12 points. Expect the gap between haves and have-nots to grow.

“We have everything we need to be successful,” Demin told me.

Behind ballin’ BYU is Young, who extinguished the “nightmare” of playing in Jokic’s barn.

“Even though (the Nuggets) hurt us,” Young said, “I still had a couple big wins in here.”