Church members who can play lobby BYU from an early age and almost all are easily identifiable on the SAT and ACT tests.
The occasional non member is nice but most don't find comfort in the culture and move on quickly.
It's way easier to identify the best BYU candidate basketball players but then building a trust relationship still has to be done well. Madsen chose Stanford over BYU primarily because he wasn't comfortable with Coach Reid.
Regarding Coach Pope, he is as good as it gets on recruiting. Whether or not he is committed enough to the BYU purpose to make him a good fit for BYU and/or a strong enough coach is a question for others to answer.
I'll say i very much like him.