Sources: Suns assistant Kevin Young to be hired as BYU head coach, replacing Mark Pope

Phoenix Suns assistant coach Kevin Young is being hired as the head coach at BYU, sources confirmed to Yahoo Sports' Jake Fischer.

Young fills the vacancy left by Mark Pope, who left BYU to replace John Calipari at Kentucky. Calipari left Kentucky to take the Arkansas job. A Salt Lake City native, Young is returning to Utah, where he began his U.S. coaching career as an assistant with Utah State in 2007.

Per ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, Young will continue to coach the Suns through the NBA playoffs. The Suns earned the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference and will begin their first-round series against the No. 3 seed Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday. Per the report, Young will start to assemble his BYU staff immediately in order to get recruiting underway.

Young, 42, has spent eight seasons as an assistant coach in the NBA. He coached five seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers from 2016-21 before joining Monty Williams' staff in Phoenix as associate head coach in 2021. He retained his role with the Suns when Frank Vogel took over as head coach this season.

Prior to coaching in Philadelphia, Young spent eight seasons as a coach in the NBA G League. He previously worked as an assistant at Oxford College in Atlanta from 2008-09 after a year at Utah State.

Young takes over a BYU program that secured a fifth-place finish in its first season in the Big 12 and made the NCAA tournament as a No. 6 seed. The tournament bid for BYU was its second in the last nine years.

Young was reportedly a candidate for multiple openings during this hiring cycle. Per Wojnarowski, he also interviewed with the Charlotte Hornets and Brooklyn Nets.