The last time BYU had a head men’s basketball coaching opening, it was pretty apparent to most people close to the program that eight-year assistant Dave Rose would get the job to replace Steve Cleveland, who was moving on to Fresno State after a 9-21 season in Provo.
That wasn’t true in 1997, when BYU brass began an exhaustive search to fill a vacancy created when Roger Reid was fired seven games into the 1996-97 season and Tony Ingle became interim coach. Very few people predicted that Cleveland, then a relatively unknown coach at Fresno City College, would get the job.