BYU basketball is hunting the exact player they need: a 7-foot monster from UConn

Kevin Young and his BYU staff are on the trail to track down a 7'1" UConn transfer who could fill the Cougars' most fundamental needs for the coming season: size and defense.

BYU basketball was undersized and outmuscled for much of the 2025-26 season. Keiba Keita and Khadim Mboup were powerful, certainly, but standing at just 6'9" each, they were regularly outrebounded by the longer and taller bigs that patrol the upper echelon of the Big 12 Conference.

Xavion Staton, a 7-foot freshman and AJ Dybanta's Team USA teammate, spent most of the season posted to the bench nursing an injury, though wouldn't have been much help as his spindly frame still lacks the physicality to crash around in the paint. Abdullah Ahmed was disappointing for a number of reasons, most of which kept the 6'10" rim protector off the floor, even with the injury-thinned depth chart.

But Eric Reibe, a 7'1" 260-pound center who spent his freshman season with the National Runner-up UConn Huskies would absolutely fill the hole that was torn open through the wear of the 2025-26 season.

Most importantly, however, he also boasts perhaps the most beautiful shooting stroke I have ever seen from a player his size. Sure, the ball always flies a little prettier off the hands of a lefty, but in his pre-college competition in Germany, the big regularly spotted up from distance and delivered three after three after three.

You can see that jumper on display here, along with some crafty finishing.

Before you start to sweat and panic that Reibe could be a paperweight contactless shooter who disregards his size and plays like a 5'9", 140-pound guard tossing pebbles at the backboard and just praying that nobody touches him (exactly how I played in high school, by the way), the numbers suggest that he isn't desperate to hit a quota beyond the arc. He's not nearly as thin as Matt Haarms from back in the day, though I refuse to speak ill of the former Purdue transfer and exceptionally fun player at BYU.

At his size, Reibe is also a remarkable screener -- almost Stephen Adams-esque against college defenders.

He played all 40 games for Dan Hurley as a freshman, starting five of them. He attempted just 13 three-pointers in his appearances, and hit four of them for a rate of just over 30% on a very low sample size. 98.7% of his field goal attempts were from two-point land; he's not afraid to play down low. He averaged 5.9 points and 3.3 rebounds in 13.8 minutes per game as a freshman.

Reibe has received interest from many other programs, but BYU currently stands among other favorites Kentucky and Indiana to secure his services for 2026-27. Having already bolstered the roster primarily in the backcourt and on the wing, Kevin Young's rotation needs a center who can inflict his will as a rebounder, defender, and threat on the offensive end.

In so, so many ways Reibe is the perfect shape to fill the dodecahedron hole in BYU's roster.

Reibe was a four-star center and the 35th-rated prospect in the 2025 recruiting class.

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