The U men’s basketball team has been known to peter out at the end of games this season-especially ones against New Mexico. Utah fell in overtime at the Pit in the first go-round, and followed that up with a frustrating one-point loss at the Huntsman Center in the rematch.
The latest version in Las Vegas was reminiscent of the first two, except this time Utah found a way to finish.
Utah led by eight with 4:14 to go before New Mexico came storming back by outscoring the Utes 10-2 for the rest of regulation. As the Lobos inched closer and closer, Ute fans watching the unfolding drama at the Thomas and Mack Center and undoubtedly thought to themselves: Here we go again.
Sure enough, the Utes passed up their first opportunity to slam the door shut on the Lobos when in the final second of the game, and the score even at 72 apiece, Luka Drca got caught in the air and threw the ball out of bounds. The blunder cost the Utes a chance at scoring the game-winning bucket, and left the Utes with five minutes of unfinished business in overtime.
The Utes didn’t squander their last-second opportunities in overtime though. In fact, Luke Neville made the most of them, flushing down two powerful dunks in the final 1:03. Neville had a huge game for Utah with 26 points.
“I was kind of disappointed in my first-half effort,” said Neville, who switched up his strategy in the second half. “I just tried to go up strong and just tried to dunk the ball every single time. My teammates told me that. They said, ‘you’re the biggest guy on the court, you need to dominate inside.'”
It’s a wonder that his teammates didn’t pipe in with that little nugget of wisdom sooner.
Head coach Jim Boylen didn’t want to see his team repeat what has become a familiar repetition to the end of most of Utah’s losses.
“We’ve been in this situation before,” Boylen told his team in a late-game huddle. “Every game is a three, five-point game?I kind of repeat all the things that have happened to us during the year, put it in their head we can’t let it happen again.”
This time, Boylen’s words sunk in. There was no shooting of layups when 3-pointers were needed (loss at home to New Mexico) and no waiting to shoot until it was too late (loss at home to BYU-both mental errors that cost Utah wins.
“You have to give yourself a chance to win, and then learn how to win,” Boylen said. “You know, we’ve been working on that all year. Today we were blessed to get one.”
The Utes now hope that their newfound ability to finish will carry over into the next round of the tournament when they go up against the hometown UNLV Rebels.
“Maybe this is the win that will give us some confidence for this year, but also for the future,” Boylen said.
The Utes split the two-game series with UNLV this season with each team winning on their home floor. Utah will now try to snap UNLV’s 13 game home floor winning streak.