While highly-touted freshmen Egor Demin and Kannon Catchings are the two BYU players who consistently get mentioned as NBA prospects, there’s only one player on Kevin Young’s team who looks NBA-ready today:
Richie Saunders.
While BYU fans have always swooned over Saunders’ grittiness and relentless motor, his overall skill set has blossomed over the past year, especially on the offensive end. Richie’s 13.9 points per game leads the Cougars as does his torrid 42.9% 3-point shooting on five attempts per game. His 1.3 steals per game ranks second on the team.
Through four Big 12 games this year he dropped 30 points on Arizona State and 26 on TCU. He shot a combined 20-of-31 in those two games, including drilling 11-of-18 3-point shots.
In addition to his recent scoring prowess, the 6-foot-5 junior defends like a maniac on the perimeter. While I don’t have access to “hustle board” statistics for college hoops, Saunders would likely be somewhere near the top of the national leaderboard.
Many NBA scouts coming to Provo to evaluate Demin and Catchings have probably ended up scribbling “Richie Saunders” in their notebooks.
Every NBA team is looking for “3-and-D” wings like Richie. BYU head coach and former Phoenix Suns associate head coach Kevin Young sees Saunders’ NBA potential. In November, Young said the following to the Deseret News, “I know some of our younger guys are talked a lot about with NBA aspirations, but Richie is right there. I tell every scout that comes through I think he is an NBA player.”
But the stark reality for Sanders and for BYU fans is he likely won’t see his name called in the NBA Draft, and it all comes down to one factor:
Richie Saunders is just too old.
Age and the NBA Draft
After excelling at Wasatch Academy and graduating high school in 2020, Saunders served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before enrolling at BYU for the 2022-23 season.
From an NBA perspective, other members of the class of 2020 include proven veterans like Cade Cunningham, Evan Mobley, and Scottie Barnes. Most NBA teams invest their sparse draft capital on either top-shelf “one-and-done” talents with obvious skills that will translate to the NBA, or on young development projects who may or may not pan out. NBA front offices would rather try to mold a raw 19-year-old with upside than invest that time and money in a more fully-formed player in his early twenties.
In November 2024 Zach Kram wrote an excellent piece at The Ringer about age and the NBA Draft. The conclusions were not pretty for older NBA prospects like Richie Saunders. While Kram’s article focused on Dalton Knecht, one of college basketball’s best players in 2023-24 who also happened to be turning 23 with the draft approaching, the same reality also applies to BYU’s “older” players. When asked about why some teams were hesitant to invest a draft pick in Knecht, here’s what Kram reported:
“Although The Ringer, The Athletic, and ESPN all ranked Knecht in the top 10 of his class, according to a draft-night report, ‘A half-dozen NBA executives told ESPN that it was Knecht’s age—he turned 23 on April 19—and not concerns about his medicals or other reasons that primarily caused his slide.’”
If a Top-10 prospect like Dalton Knecht struggled to overcome his age in the NBA Draft, the challenge is even more daunting for less-heralded prospects like Richie Saunders.
NBA Performance vs. Age Drafted
Kram’s article went on to explain that college players who happen to be 22 or older are often viewed by NBA front offices as having too low of a ceiling to be drafted. By that age players might be able to show modest improvement in their skills in the NBA, but it’s unlikely they’ll “make the leap” and develop All-Star potential.
Kram then provided some eye-opening statistical analysis evaluating the performance of NBA first round picks by age. He analyzed relative NBA performance by the age at which the player was drafted broken into five categories: Ages 18 and younger, age19, age 20, age 21, and age 22 and older. The clear trend was that younger first round picks dramatically outperformed older picks, but that’s to be expected with teenaged “one-and-done” superstars normally populating the Top 10 picks in a draft.
Richie Saunders isn’t going to be a lottery pick, so that data doesn’t really apply to him.
Fortunately, Kram also assessed the performance of first round picks excluding lottery picks, so picks 15-30 in a given draft. Unfortunately for Richie Saunders, the same patterns by age held true.
The data revealed that non-lottery first round picks drafted at 18 or younger exceeded performance expectations by 133%, 19-year-olds at 0% (meaning their performance equally matched expectations), 20-year-olds at +14%, and 21-year-olds at +4%.
So how did non-lottery first round picks selected at age 22 or older perform versus expectations?
Unfortunately for Richie, these older draft prospects have performed at negative-8% relative to expectations, the worst of the bunch.
NBA front offices know this data. Talent evaluators not only assess current performance, they also assess long-term potential. The data clearly shows NBA teams get, on average, a much better return on investment by drafting teenagers than players in their early twenties.
Richie Saunders' NBA Future
But all is not lost for Richie Saunders.
If he ultimately goes undrafted he has the potential to justify an invitation to an NBA Summer League camp and then it’s up to him to scratch and claw his way onto the roster. And if there’s anything Richie Saunders knows how to do it’s scratch and claw his way to the top.
Other former BYU returned missionaries have done just that.
Eric Mika served a mission in Italy, went undrafted in 2017, then played one game for the Sacramento Kings during the 2019-20 season.
Kyle Collinsworth served a mission to Russia, went undrafted in 2016, then cracked the Dallas Mavericks roster playing 32 games in the 2017-18 season.
While Elijah Bryant didn’t serve a mission, he was still an “older” prospect after he played one season at Davidson, sat out a year due to transfer rules at the time, then played two seasons at BYU. He went undrafted in 2018 but cracked the Milwaukee Bucks roster playing in one game of the 2020-21 season, earning an NBA Championship ring.
Did any of these guys stick in the NBA? Unfortunately, no. But they all got their shot, and that’s all older, undrafted players can hope for.
Outside of the BYU circle, former Utah State star Sam Merrill served a mission in Nicaragua and became a second round pick in the 2020 draft at age 24. He has since carved out a solid five-year NBA career where he’s a regular rotational player for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Richie Saunders has a game that can translate to today’s NBA.
His age will probably prevent him from getting drafted.
But if any BYU player in recent memory has the game to go along with the grit, determination, and relentlessness to grind his way on to an NBA roster, it’s Richie Saunders.