The coaching staff snapped him up when he didn't have huge accolades/stars in California. The challenge is always going to be finding players out of state who want to come to BYU and who we have a reasonable chance to land. Kids in Utah understand what BYU is....but, out of state is very different.
To be clear, I live in Utah now, but I went to high school and played football in California. Going to CIF was a blast....the same thing as playing for State in Utah. I do think there are some very talented players in Utah. Just not as many and the talented ones here really stand out so we end up competing for them with the whole country.