Ugly but we won.

[Coreyc04]

Utes played subpar defense tonight and couldn’t hit a shot and still won. I guess that is good. Their pick and roll defense needs improvement and Why haven’t we ever run the Pick and Roll with Collette and Kuzma? It clears the middle out and opens things up.

A few thoughts from tonights game:
Larry needs to stagger minutes for Kuzma and Collette. Both of them can score really well but without them we go into droughts. This game we got down by 10 in the first half when this happened and we relinquished the lead against Oregon.

Utah needs to figure out its pick and roll defense. Tonight it looked like UVU. We could not stop subpar players when they were running the P&R. 

Honestly we need to hope Fultz is out next game because he will torch us and we will lose if we play the way we did tonight. 

Next week is CU and we hopefully can get some of our guards rested and watching film. This team desperately needs it.

The Thursday Saturday schedule is terrible. We need it to be a Tuesday-Wednesday Friday-Sunday schedule. The Pac 12 needs to realize it could stagger games to where a team can get an extra night of rest during the schedule.

Kuzma was silent in the first half which is why the lead wasn’t larger.

Too many turnovers and selfish basketball out of this team.

The flaws of this team have been exposed. None of them are fatal. The coaching staff needs to clean things up and they need to get better or we may not even make the NIT.

[Newbomb Turk]

Question about the game: Late in the game Kuzma was called for an offensive foul. Then the refs huddled together for a long time and then one of them went over to Ernie Kent and said “we made the wrong call” (or something to that effect – several of us heard it). Then they gave the ball to Wash St out of bounds.

Anybody know what that was all about?

[Utahute72]

On TV it looked like they (or at least one of them) initially pointed the other was indicating utah ball.

[zeous]

Maybe a way to warn him about a “make up call” coming soon?

[UTE98]

Soon, it was the next play down the court.

Three offensive fouls in three or four possessions. Don’t get me wrong I love to see good defense leading to offensive fouls, but three in a row????

[Newbomb Turk]

So, does anybody know exactly what happened? It looked like they called a foul on Kuzma, then reversed it, but gave the ball to Wash St anyway.

[Puget Ute]

Ugly win. I am glad they pulled it out. My power went off with about 3 minutes left with WSU rallying, and it apparently took down the local cell towers as well because I couldn’t get game updates.

Glad they found a way to win it. I wonder if they are getting burned out on the season.

[Minnesota Ute]

I worry about that too, because a coach can do that to a team. I’ve seen what might be a pattern, where the team starts a little ragged, hits their stride looking like world beaters, then all of a sudden they seem broken. I saw this with my son’s high school team, because the coach is so demanding and critical, that by 2/3 into the season, they are beginning to hate the season, the sport, the team, the coach, etc and just want it to be over. It stops being fun. It seemed like it happened when we lost at OSU last year in early February but then we got on a run, the year before we really limped across the finish line losing 3 of our last 6.

I feel like I’m seeing some of that in the body language, but I’m hoping I’m wrong. And more over, I hope that they get their poop grouped because last night was painful to watch. I’m shocked that we only were charged 14 turnovers because it seemed like a hell of a lot more than that. And 13% shooting from 3, Jeebus Kyle and Tyler need to STOP shooting 3s. Kuz is now 18 of 65 (28%) and Rawson is 15 of 52 (29%). YOU ARE HURTING YOUR TEAM!!!!!!!!

[ironman1315]

I think the problem with this team is Larry. It’s a lack of mental toughness on the part of the players. Dude’s need to just grind it out. It sucks but so does life in general. Gotta fight through it.