National Perception of Utah in Basketball But…

[The Miami Ute]

After the last two football seasons, you could make the case that things are trending in that direction as well.

I just read an article in “The Athletic” where the author, a guy called Jim Root, did a thought experiment and completely realigned all 364 MBB teams in new conferences. (If you have The Athletic, you can find the article here: What if college basketball ran conference realignment? We sorted all 364 teams to find out).

Where did Utah end up you ask? Not back in a reimagined PAC but in a new WCC with BYU, Colorado, Gonzaga, Grand Canyon, San Diego State, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Saint Mary’s, and Utah State.

So again, my question is, what does this say about the national perception of Utah? I would probably venture to say “not good things” and that Utah better start figuring out how to win again quick, lest it become irrevocably lumped with programs of a lesser stature.

[Chasqui]

So a couple of things with the article

1. It is completely based on basketball and their overall conference “net rating”. In this world, Utah is in the WCC with a net rating of 15.5 and a spot in the “power-ish” conference. That rating is technically the fourth best behind the Big 12 (19) SEC (17.8) and Big 10 (17.4). It’s better than the ACC, Big East and PAC-10. This is for the years 2020-2024

2. It also has the PAC-10 as a powerish conference with teams like UCLA, Arizona, USC and Oregon. Basketball wise, they tend to have pretty good years year after year.

3. The conferences were heavily based on geography. If anything I think it shows at a national level that people miss regional rivalries. USC and Maryland don’t make a lot of sense but UCLA v Stanford does.

Overall, I don’t think the national brand of Utah is hurting much. On the basketball side, for sure but honestly it’s been at an all time low for decades. Football is keeping Utah known. If you look at all the national writers views for Utah football, everyone is predicting a comeback year for us and how abnormal last year was.

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