BYU's Khadim Mboup is smashing expectations in his redshirt freshman season

When Khadim Mboup joined the BYU basketball team in December 2024 as a mid-year enrollee, he was mostly viewed as a long-term development prospect. After all, he prepped at the NBA Academy in Africa, which caused him to fly below the radar of most traditional recruiting outlets.

When BYU announces a commitment, most of us as fans pull up the player's profile at 247 Sports to see how many stars they have and which other major schools had made offers. Back in July 2024 when Mboup committed to BYU, he was an overlooked "zero star" recruit who was so obscure that they didn't even attach a photo to his profile.

Robby McCombs with Vanquish the Foe credited BYU assistant coach Will Voigt with spearheading Mboup's recruiting. I doubt even coach Voigt could have predicted just how quickly this diamond in the rough would start to shine.

Khadim Mboup's wonderful, unexpected impact

After joining the team in-season in 2024-25, Mboup redshirted his freshman year without logging any playing time. Most BYU fans still knew very little about the 6-foot-9 international player coming into this season, and even fewer predicted he would become an impact player as a redshirt freshman. After all, even highly-touted four-star talents often struggle to crack the rotation of competitive Power Five basketball programs, let alone a "zero star" like Mboup.

Coming into this season it didn't look like there would be many minutes for Khadim. Keba Keita was returning as the incumbent starting center. Mihailo Boskovic would get some minutes. The Cougars signed four-star freshman center Xavion Staton, the No. 37 prospect in the class of 2025 and had high hopes for him. In November the Cougars added Ameer Abdullah from the NBA's G League.

But Khadim Mboup continued to practice, grow, and develop coming out of his redshirt campaign. By the time this season started this international man of mystery won the confidence of the coaching staff enough to earn 19 minutes in BYU's season-opening victory over Villanova.

That level of playing time has continued as he's averaged 15.6 minutes per game in his solid season.

Mboup's in-season progression

What's most encouraging to BYU fans is Mboup's obvious improvement as the season has progressed.

In BYU's final regular season game, an impressive win over No. 10 Texas Tech, the 26 minutes Mboup played were the second most of his redshirt freshman campaign. While his four points and six rebounds don't jump off the stat sheet, his outstanding second half perimeter defense was key in fueling BYU's massive victory.

In BYU's following game, a win against Kansas State in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament, Mboup had his best game of the year. He scored an efficient eight points on 4-of-5 shooting with a career-high 14 rebounds and two blocks. His 23 minutes played were the third most on the season.

In Round 2 of the Big 12 Tournament in a win against West Virginia his minutes dropped to 15, but he still pulled down seven big boards.

While BYU's season has been rocky at times this year, Khadim Mboup has been a constant bright spot.

The former diamond in the rough is starting to shine brighter and brighter.