you look at someone like Pascal Siakam, who attended a Catholic school in Cameroon before being recruited to play for NMSU. He's absolutely the kind of player that BYU has a shot at landing, especially given the internationalization of the LDS church. A player of that caliber landing at BYU transforms a season, and isn't that far-fetched.

Compare that with football, and the closest example I can think of, Ziggy Ansah. When you get the 5th overall NFL draft pick (who leaves school early due to his raw potential) handed to you due to LDS connections in Africa l, you wind up with a very good defense, but a season that isn't particularly memorable. But if you get the same level of recruit in basketball, he can carry a team through the conference tournament and into the NCAA tourney.

Football recruiting is tapped out, and any sort of competitive advantage we had with Polynesian/island recruits has now been eaten up by the bigger schools, especially PAC schools and Utah. But basketball has a huge untapped talent pools.