Craig Smith is a very good coach. Next step recruiting.

[Trailgoat]

Defense is solid. His offense is getting guys open shots. Utes had a lot of mid-range open looks they could not hit. The remaining games will be live and die by three point shots. Crazy how dudes 6’6” and taller miss so many shots two feet away from the basket at this level. Uncharateristic missed free throws last night did Utah in over the course of the game 15/23, usually a strenght.

Utes are hanging in there and improving each game. Smith is keeping the team motivated and working hard. Not an easy thing to do losing so much in close games. Smith needs a BIG recruiting year for nothing else to fill a roster. Hopefully Smith can hang onto the solid core of Carlson, Worster, Stefanovic, and Madsen. He’s got to bring in a lot more players than I thought with 4-5 seniors currently playing a lot of minutes. Not sure what happened to Mahorcic? Thought I heard he was not at the game? Getting some talented players to roll in, Smith can turn this thing around in a couple year. Go Utes!

[SantaVaca]

I agree. I don’t know if anybody has noticed but other than the Washington State game, the Utes have come within a few points (even going to 2OT in one game) with nearly every team they’ve played the last month or so.

I think every player could come back if they wanted to. Even though we have so many seniors, Covid gave all of them an extra year. Riley Battin sucks and needs to transfer to a MountainWest or WCC team immediately. If we can pick up a 3-4 good transfers, I think we’ll be just fine. We hung with UCLA and Oregon until the bitter end. That shows that we either have good talent or good coaching. I left the Oregon game feeling pretty good about our future.