After two years in Salt Lake City, Burgess is rejoining the Cougars staff.

The coach who left BYU to venture off to Utah is reversing course, again.

Chris Burgess, the one-time Cougar assistant under Mark Pope, is coming back to Provo to work for new head coach Kevin Young.

Burgess was at BYU from 2019-22 and was one of Pope’s best local recruiters during the West Coast Conference days. But Burgess left Provo two years ago to coach at Utah, his alma mater.

In his two years in Salt Lake, Utah hovered around .500 in the regular season. Last season, Utah had a late flurry of wins as it went to the NIT semifinals.

But since then, the Utes have lost several key players — including point guard Deivon Smith — and two assistant coaches. DeMarlo Slocum left to join former Utah State coach Danny Sprinkle’s staff in Washington last month.

Burgess is returning to a very different BYU program than when he left. The Cougars are now in the Big 12, the same conference as Utah. Plus, BYU has shown a willingness to invest more resources into the staff.

Young was lured from the NBA thanks by $30 million and a seven-year commitment. That level of investment has been nearly unprecedented at the school owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

As for Utah, the Burgess loss is significant. Smith now has to replace two assistants and fill out a roster that is losing plenty of scoring.

The Utes are making the jump to the toughest basketball conference in the country — and the Big 12 is only getting more difficult as it adds Arizona, Colorado and Arizona State.

Smith is heading into the fourth year of a six-year deal. Utah has improved each of his three seasons. But this will be his most difficult challenge ahead.

State gas prices rose last week and reached an average of $4.55 per gallon of regular fuel on Monday, up from last week’s price of $4.54 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The average fuel price in state has risen about 14 cents since last month. According to the EIA, gas prices across the state in the last year have been as low as $3.70 on Jan. 2, 2023, and as high as $4.99 on Oct. 2, 2023.

A year ago, the average gas price in Washington was 1% lower at $4.49 per gallon.

>> INTERACTIVE: See how your area’s gas prices have changed over the years at datacentral.kitsapsun.com.

The average gas price in the United States last week was $3.65, making prices in the state about 24.4% higher than the nation’s average. The average national gas price is down from last week’s average of $3.67 per gallon.

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here. This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu.

The MVP of Tuesday night’s Major League Baseball game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers was Matt Hilton. But don’t bother looking for the 37-year-old right-hander on either team’s roster.

While the former Wyomingite did help his hometown Arizona D-backs to a 4-3 win, Hilton’s ESPN highlight reel was compiled before the first pitch was ever thrown. The pest control expert was called on to handle a colony of bees that held up the start of the game for almost two hours.

Media outlets across the country had fun with the puns — “Chase Field was buzzing last night” — but the truth of the matter is the situation could have turned serious in a heartbeat. Even before Hilton arrived he had a pretty good idea he would be dealing with a highly antagonistic crossbred species known colloquially as “killer bees.”

“We live in a state where Africanized honey bees are super common here,” Hilton told Cowboy State Daily. “Compared to a normal strain of honeybees, most people can’t tell the difference. Except these have a tendency to be extremely aggressive — 10-20 times more aggressive than the average honeybee.”

Red Carpet Treatment

Hilton informed stadium staff to move people in the closest box seats to at least 50 to 75 feet away. He was on his way.

“I explained these bees very much raised the risk level quite a bit. I kind of walked them through it, but it was not their first rodeo,” Hilton said.

In fact, stadium personnel rolled out the red carpet for Hilton and had everything waiting for the bee whisperer when he arrived.

“I was able to drive right up to the big bay doors and throw my gear on,” he said. “They had the scissor lift right there ready to go. It was in everyone’s interest to get this game underway as safely and quickly as possible.”

Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need a Hero” blared from loudspeakers as Hilton’s play-in song, just like he was the team’s closer coming in from the bullpen.

By the way, a shout out to another winning team — Blue Sky Pest Control of Phoenix. Chase Field actually contracts with the local company for regular service keeping the food concessionaire areas pest- and rodent-free.

Blue Sky Pest Control is also on-call 24/7 for just the type of crazy emergency that came up Tuesday.

“I was at my 6-year-old son’s T-ball game when the head guy at Chase called me and said he had a swarm of bees holding the game up,” Hilton said. “In my line of work, especially with a high-profile account like this, we have to drop everything and take care of the problem.”

10,000 To 20,000 Bees

When Hilton arrived to the field, he quickly anesthetized the popup colony with a non-pesticidal solution. That was done to lock the bees in place.

“They interlock their legs together when they are in a colony like this. The last thing you want to do is start poking at them and have them fly off individually looking for someone to be mad at,” Hilton said.

The pest control tech estimates between 10,000 and 20,000 bees made up this particular swarm. If agitated, D-backs fans could be in a lot more pain than anything the Dodgers could dish out.

“The risk comes in if that swarm gets disturbed. If they start stinging people, when they do it releases a pheromone in the stinger that signals: ‘Hey, get this guy,’” Hilton said.

Deaths have been reported in Arizona, Utah and Texas, where a victim was stung repeatedly by Africanized bees.

Donned in a beekeeper’s protective suit, Hilton was able to vacuum up all the bees as the crowd around him chanted, “You can do it!”

King For A Night

Once the job was done, Hilton gave the fans a fist pump and was immediately invited to toss out the ceremonial first pitch.

Just another day at the office, Hilton said. Except for the paid attendance.

“I’ve done hundreds of these types of calls. This was the first in front of 30,000 people,” Hilton said. “I’ll maybe be in a parking lot and a handful of people will be looking on from their office windows. This one was a little more high-pressure with a game hanging in the balance. It was pretty electric, pretty awesome.”

Blue Sky offers a relocation service for bee swarms it collects but the market for Africanized bees is slim.

“Beekeepers don’t want Africanized honey bees. You see pictures of video of beekeepers tending their hives without a suit on. That’s where it gets dicey. If they did that with these bees they would be in a world of hurt,” Hilton assured.

Wyoming To The Rescue

Topps, the baseball card manufacturer, is already working on a special one-off card for the bee specialist who saved the game. It will be a keepsake for the Arizona man with Wyoming roots.

Hilton lived in Buffalo, Wyoming, from ages 11 through 18 before he attended college Arizona State University. He met an Arizona girl, Morgan, and the two were married in 2010. They have four kids.

“I moved away from Buffalo because of the cold. I got married to the love of my life and found a career and a company that really suits me,” Hilton said. “Buffalo is a super cool little town and I take a lot of pride having grown up there. I miss hunting and fishing in the Big Horn Mountains.”

Contact Jake Nichols at jake@cowboystatedaily.com

Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.