A BYU Assistant Just Went Undefeated at EuroBasket

While most of college basketball spent late July on the recruiting trail, BYU associate head coach Tim Fanning was in Croatia going undefeated. Fanning coached the Netherlands to the 2026 FIBA U18 EuroBasket Division B championship on August 2, finishing a perfect 8-0 and beating Poland 71-57 in the final in Rijeka.

The title did more than hang a banner. It earned the Netherlands promotion to Division A for the first time since 2019 — a concrete, on-the-court result that a BYU basketball staffer authored against the best under-18 competition in Europe.

Eight games, zero losses

The run was not a series of blowouts followed by a coast to the finish. It was a full tournament won in every phase.

The Netherlands cleared the group stage by beating Great Britain, Belgium, Finland, Cyprus and Ireland by a combined 90-plus points — an average of nearly three scores a night — then turned up the intensity when the games got tighter. They dispatched Georgia by 29 in the quarterfinals, survived a 78-66 semifinal against Czechia after trailing at halftime, and then rallied again in the final, trailing Poland at the break before outscoring them 37-26 over the closing stretch.

The tournament, in other words, escalated exactly the way a championship run is supposed to. The comfortable group wins gave way to a one-possession-mindset knockout bracket, and the Dutch answered every step up in difficulty, the margin shrinking without the result ever changing.

That is the through-line of the week: a team that kept its composure when it was behind. Fanning's group trailed at halftime in both the semifinal and the championship game and won both anyway — the kind of in-game adjustment that does not show up in a final record but is exactly what a coaching staff is hired to produce.

Built on the offensive glass

If there was a signature to the Dutch title, it was rebounding. The Netherlands averaged a tournament-high 18.7 offensive rebounds per game — a relentless second-chance engine that let them survive cold shooting stretches and wear opponents down late.

Offensive rebounding is a coaching choice as much as a talent one. It requires buy-in, effort and a system that sends bodies to the glass on every miss — and it is the single most reliable way to steal possessions when the shots are not falling. Fanning's team led the field in it across eight games, and in a final and semifinal the Netherlands trailed at halftime, those extra possessions are plausibly the margin. For a program winning its second Division B crown, that identity is the difference between a good tournament and an unbeaten one.

What Fanning brings back to Provo

This was not Fanning's first turn with the Netherlands. He led the same U18 program in 2025 to a 4-3 finish and a ninth-place result, a season that included a 67-62 win over host Croatia. The jump from ninth place to an undefeated title in a single year is its own coaching story — a group that grew up, and a staff that learned what worked.

For BYU men's basketball, the value is direct. Fanning spent a summer running a national team through short-turnaround tournament basketball: scouting a new opponent every 48 hours, coaching through halftime deficits, managing rotations, and developing elite teenage prospects under pressure. Those are transferable reps, and they arrive as Kevin Young's staff continues to build an internationally flavored roster — the Cougars recently added Polish professional big man Jakub Urbaniak, a player who, like Fanning's Dutch group, came up through the European system.

That overlap is not a coincidence. BYU is increasingly comfortable operating in the international game, both in who it recruits and in how its staff spends the offseason, and Fanning's EuroBasket title is a visible marker of it.

A different kind of offseason résumé

Coaching staffs are usually evaluated on things fans never see — a practice plan, a scouting report, a player-development arc that pays off two seasons later. Fanning's summer is a rare exception: a public, verifiable result with a score attached. He took a team to Croatia and did not lose.

The tactical questions it raises are the interesting part for BYU. Does the offensive-rebounding emphasis carry into how the Cougars attack the glass in the Big 12? How much of the short-tournament, adjust-on-the-fly approach shows up in a non-conference schedule? Those are answered on the floor in November, not in a July final in Rijeka.

But the marker is real. A member of BYU's coaching staff went 8-0 against Europe's best U18 teams, pushed a national program up a division, and came home. For a program trying to establish itself as a national and international brand, that is a summer worth pointing to.

Key facts:

• Coach: Tim Fanning, BYU men's basketball associate head coach and Netherlands U18 head coach
• Result: 2026 FIBA U18 EuroBasket Division B champions, 8-0
• Final: Netherlands 71, Poland 57 (August 2, Rijeka, Croatia)
• Reward: Promotion to Division A for the first time since 2019
• Signature stat: Tournament-high 18.7 offensive rebounds per game
• Comebacks: Trailed at halftime in both the semifinal (78-66 over Czechia) and the final, and won both
• Context: Fanning also led the Netherlands in 2025 (4-3, ninth place)
• Human-review checkpoint: Confirm the final score and Fanning's title against BYU's release before any follow-up coverage