Last week at this time, the Runnin’ Utes were riding high. Coming off an upset win at first-place San Diego State, the U found itself right in the thick of things for a decent seed in the MWC tournament.
But in the course of two games it all fell apart. The Utes (12-12, 5-8) now find themselves with the burden of two-straight heartbreaking home losses, both of which can be traced back to the final possession of regulation. The team will try to regroup tonight when they head south for an 8:30 p.m. MST meeting with UNLV (14-10, 8-4).
“We’re going to Vegas, and good, bad or indifferent, this is what we have next,” Ute coach Ray Giacoletti said. “We’ll try to get better in (practice) and go down there.”
The game with the Rebels will be a benchmark for the Utes. They have proven to be fallible on their home court with the recent losses to Air Force and Colorado State and now must hope that the good road-vibe gained with the win over SDSU will continue in Sin City.
“You always have a home court advantage, but we seem to be playing pretty well on the road,” Ute center Luke Nevill said.
Giacoletti admits that one reason the Utes are having trouble in the clutch is that perhaps the young team is dealing with too complex a scheme. In both the CSU loss and the Air Force defeat the Utes failed to make a stop down the stretch, then followed it up with a botched offensive play that could have won the game at the end of regulation.
Whereas last season’s team had senior point guard Marc Jackson and national player-of-the-year Andrew Bogut to steer things in the right direction, many of the Utes, including the all-important point guards, are lacking the experience necessary to execute complicated plays with time running down.
“Making reads is not where we need to be right now, especially in end-of-game situations,” Giacoletti said. “It needs to be very cut and dry. ‘This is what we’re running, this is where it’s going to.’ That’s the difference between where we’re at right now and where we were a year ago. This year we need to be very specific.”
The Rebels already have one win against the Utes this season, a 71-59 win at the Huntsman Center on Jan. 21. In that game the Utes were without forward Bryant Markson, who was serving a one-game suspension.
The Rebels are led by senior big man Louis Amundson, who averages 14.3 points and 9.1 rebounds per game. In their last meeting he notched 18 points and earned the respect of Nevill, who has seen his fair share of talented big men this season.
“He’s difficult to play against because he’s strong, but at the same time he’s very quick and very athletic,” Nevill said. “He ranks pretty much around the top (of the MWC centers).”
The Utes and Rebels game will be televised live at 8:30 p.m. on KJZZ 14.