BYU, alongside Xavier, Saint Joseph's, Boston College, Arizona State, and Davidson are each tied for second most in Elite Eight appearances without a Final Four with three (Missouri has the most with five).

Under Watts, BYU also became the first U.S. college basketball program to include an international player on its roster, as Finland native Timo Lampen debuted in the 1958–59 season.

Later, BYU's Krešimir Ćosić, born in Yugoslavia (modern-day Croatia), became the first international player to be named an All-American.

Part of his firing had to do with a private comment Reid made to Chris Burgess, then considered the top high school player in the nation and a Latter-day Saint whose father had attended BYU; Reid suggested that Burgess had let down the entire church by choosing to attend Duke rather than BYU.

After the 2004–05 season, Cleveland resigned to become the head coach at Fresno State; he was replaced by Dave Rose.

Dave Rose, co-captain of the University of Houston's 1983 "Phi Slama Jama" college basketball team, began the first of six straight 20-win seasons in 2005–06.

Rose and assistant Dave Rice continued BYU's successful recruiting with the addition of All-American Jimmer Fredette in 2007 and DeMarcus Harrison in 2011.

[9] In 2010, Rose coached BYU to their first NCAA tournament victory in 17 years in a double-overtime win against the University of Florida.

The program was dealt an additional blow when the NCAA announced penalties against the Cougars due to an alleged benefits scandal surrounding shooting guard Nick Emery.

As part of those sanctions, BYU was ordered to vacate all victories where Nick Emery played over two seasons (a total of 47 wins).

An official BYU athletics department statement (not attributed to a specific employee) read in part, “The vacation-of-records penalty is extremely harsh and unprecedented given the details of the case.

The team finished that season 24–8 and was projected to be a lock for the NCAA tournament as a single-digit seed before all postseason play was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2020–21 season was projected to be a rebuilding year due to the loss of Childs, Haws, and Toolson to graduation, but Pope revamped the team in the offseason.

Joining returning senior guard Alex Barcello was graduate transfers Brandon Averette and Matt Haarms.

[18] Young proceeded to sign four of the nine highest-rated recruits in BYU history (according to 247Sports)—Egor Demin, Kanon Catchings, Brody Kozlowski, and Elijah Crawford.

The Cougars have retired the numbers of four players in their history, with the most recent being the jerseys of Hutchins and Minson on February 16, 2013.