Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- BYU women's basketball head coach Amber Whiting recruits heavily from Idaho.
- Four players from Idaho are on the BYU roster, including standout Amari Whiting.
- Whiting emphasizes Idaho's hardworking mentality, contributing to BYU's successful start.
PROVO — Amber Whiting has plenty of reasons to recruit out of Idaho.
Before she was the women's basketball head coach at BYU, Whiting made her career in the Gem State, including leading Burley High to the 4A state title in 2022, just the third in the school's history.
She also coached nationally on the club circuit, with Natalie Williams Basketball Academy on the Adidas 3SSB and Utah Hard Knock in AAU. Whiting isn't a perfect coach, but identifying elite talent isn't one of her flaws.
So when the former Snow College, Weber State and BYU guard took over at her alma mater, recruiting the Gem State became a priority. Yes, there was her daughter — former four-star point guard Amari Whiting, who was born in Boise and grew up in Burley — who she flipped from her previous commitment to Oregon.
But in Year 3 of Whiting's regime, four members of the Cougars' roster hail from Idaho, second-most from any state to Utah's five, and one more than the three international prospects (from Canada and New Zealand).
Of the 10 players that have seen the court for BYU through the first four games, four of them come from Idaho. That includes Amari Whiting, the starting point guard who co-leads the team in minutes with four-star Canadian international Delaney Gibb, and Brinley Cannon, the 6-foot-1 freshman who averages 5.4 points, 3.0 rebounds and 1.5 steals in 16 minutes per game for the Cougars.
When the Cougars needed a jolt, it was Cannon that provided it in Tuesday night's 85-64 win over McNeese State. The Idahoan scored a 7 of her 11 points during a 7-0 run that helped rally BYU from a 5-point first-quarter deficit to a 22-21 edge at the quarterback and 41-35 advantage at halftime.
The same can be said of Kambree Barber, a native of Rigby, Idaho, who came off the bench to score a season-high 7 points with seven rebounds in 17 minutes against the Cowgirls.
"These two are my secret weapon, if you haven't noticed," Whiting said of Cannon and Barber. "Whenever they come in, it's instant offense and instant defense — and energy off the bench.
"They're different players, but coming in together, their length creates a lot of problems. Both of them crash the boards; Kambree is always rebounding offensively like crazy. They cause a lot of havoc on the defensive end, and when they turn around and get aggressive on offense, I feel like they've settled into who they are."
If a pair of Idaho natives as "secret weapons" seems surprising, it shouldn't be. The Cougars' longstanding ties to the Gem State make the area a veritable proving ground for Division I talent, and Whiting's own success in Burley and the surrounding areas has created more fervor among the fanbase north of Utah.
During a recent road trip to Idaho State last weekend, the upper bowl of the arena was filled with blue-clad BYU fans.
Many of them came to support the Whitings, including multiple variations of teams from Burley, while others poured in from Shelley, about 45 miles away where Cannon grew up; Rigby, where Barber learned to hoop; and Idaho Falls, the hometown of senior Lauren Davenport.
There is a lot of talent flowing from Idaho to Division I women's basketball, and the Idaho hooper fits Whiting's system at BYU.
"Everyone there plays hard," said Cannon, the former two-time Idaho 4A player of the year whose brother McKay played for the Cougars from 2017-19. "It's a play-hard, guard-and-defend, and play team basketball mentality. Idaho basketball is growing a lot.
"My high school also played super unselfish, team basketball," she added, "and that's what we're trying to do here at BYU."
During the Cougars' 77-69 win over Idaho State, where Cannon's mother Jennifer played from 1993-95, the upper bowl of the 2,133-seat crowd at Reed Gym was covered in BYU blue.
But that wasn't a surprise for any of the Cougars, not even the ones who don't come from Idaho.
"I know that there's a big BYU fan base out of Idaho," said Marya Hudgins, a junior wing from Aurora, Colorado, who transferred from Santa Clara. "Even from playing at Santa Clara, they sometimes had more fans than we did. I kind of expected that."
Clearly, Whiting is trying to mine diamonds out of the Gem State. And it's not just for proximity.
"There's a lot of kids that come from farming communities. They're just blue-collar kids who want to get in and do the dirty work," Whiting said. "They're not always necessarily the most talented, but they're really hard workers; they're going to go grind it out for you.
"You see that come out in all four of mine that I have. A lot of girls do that in Idaho; it's a rep that they have, for sure."
