PROVO — Dean Rueckert is the first commitment of BYU basketball’s recruiting class of 2026, but the Timpview High standout with a bit of an older soul fires himself up with a pregame playlist featuring a lot of Green Day, Weezer, Nirvana, Blink-182 and the Beach Boys.

“That’s what I’ve been into right now. I go on streaks of different things, too,” he said during an interview with ESPN radio in Utah County.

“My dad loves that stuff. He definitely put me on,” Rueckert added of his father, Chris.

He chose BYU over a group of finalists that included Clemson, Stanford, Utah and Washington, though the final choice was made between the Cougars and Huskies.

But BYU stood out on his official visit, when he connected with current freshman Xavion Staton and visited an escape room with several current players and staff.

“I was doing a lot of the work, I can’t lie,” he joked. “But there were a lot of guys pitching in; some guys just didn’t know what was going on. It was a good time.”

Rueckert’s commitment signals BYU’s commitment to men’s basketball, that the program continues to put a premium on in-state and Latter-day Saint prospects in addition to top talent like former No. 1 overall recruits like freshman AJ Dybantsa.

Rueckert’s talent stands out, first and foremost. But he’s also a Utah native who grew up wanting to shoot like Jimmer Fredette, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who plans to enroll at BYU as soon as his high school career is over, and a BYU legacy recruit whose parents went to the university.

His father played basketball at Ricks College before transferring to BYU, where he was a big faceoff specialist on the school’s club lacrosse team. He also has an older sister, Brielle, who plays volleyball at Weber State and celebrated her birthday with the family Monday when Rueckert made his announcement.

“She’s a very forgiving person,” Rueckert quipped, adding that he made sure he gave her a birthday present before he made his commitment known.

Rueckert also jokes that he gets his athleticism from his mom Tiffany — a skilled pianist. But the family bleeds blue, as evidenced by his father’s emotional reaction when Rueckert made known his commitment for the first time.

“We have to get the local guys, they have to be a part of it, or it doesn’t feel like BYU basketball,” said former BYU standout Kevin Nixon, who came to BYU from Iowa in 1991, converted to the church, and now trains the next generation of hoopers through Utah Gold and Mountain City Hoops. “When I went to BYU, I wasn’t a member of the church … but I was a typical BYU-type player.

“Those are the kinds of kids you have to get,” he added.

In the transactional game of college basketball, programs have to identify talent and recruit them with everything necessary (including top-tier facility and name, image and likeness funding), while showing them a path toward helping them achieve their goals — whether that be at the NBA level or professionally in some other arena.

Rueckert isn’t currently a projected NBA draft pick. But his shooting and athleticism give him NBA upside — and he feels that BYU’s coaching staff from Kevin Young to assistants Chris Burgess, Will Voigt, Tim Fanning, Brandon Dunson and John Linehan can help him maximize his potential.

“I’ve been lucky to get to know the new coaching staff really well, and develop a relationship with them,” said Rueckert, who grew up playing with BYU rising sophomore Brody Kozlowski at Utah Prospects. “That coaching staff at BYU is amazing; it’s a lot of professional connections, NBA connections, and it’s really hard to beat that.”

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.