Someone should tell Jim Boylen he has a chair.
His red-and-white seat sat vacant the entire Cal game as Boylen paced back and forth on the sidelines. He raised his arms in disbelief when Lawrence Borha took an ill-advised shot outside the paint. He made a beeline to the referee during a time-out to tell him exactly how he felt about the last call. When he needed a rest, he got as close to the court as possible and took a knee. In the second half, I halfway expected him to start directing traffic in the lane with glow sticks.
The Huntsman Center is where the Crimson Club goes to die, and Jim Boylen’s energy is enough to cause a heart attack.
I don’t know how the man does it. Have you ever looked closely at where Boylen has been in his coaching career? He studied under Jud Heathcote, the legendary Michigan State coach who was the floor director behind the famed 1979 Magic vs. Bird national championship. Boylen was an assistant coach for the Houston Rockets during their back-to-back finals, guiding the footwork of Hakeem Olajuwon. He helped Yao Ming feel comfortable on American hardwood.
He is an easily excited man who has been in electrified atmospheres. The Huntsman Center has all the electricity of a pacemaker.
It’s surreal, really. Amid the dusty air and sound of oxygen tanks, Boylen sticks out like a sore thumb.
The Runnin’ Utes have been up and down all season. They’ve had résumé-building wins against Ole Miss and Missouri State coupled with point-and-laugh losses to Southwest Baptist and Idaho State.
The game Wednesday night against Cal was business as usual. Utah played well enough to lose. There were bright spots, including three 3-point buckets in a row at the start of the second half, but the game ended with a last-second shot by Cal guard Jerome Randle that sealed the victory.
Yet it didn’t matter whether the Utes were down by eight or up by five. Jim Boylen never changed his persona. He clapped, waved, wandered and shook his fists. During each free throw, he put his hand on a guard’s shoulder and offered advice.
I don’t understand how his energy doesn’t intoxicate the team. These young players should be drinking Boylen up and going wild after every shot. It just isn’t happening. The game had as much energy as the rest of the Huntsman Retirement Center. The only thing used less than Boylen’s chair was Luke Nevill’s facial expressions.
This is a team with talent. It is a team that knows how to defend and play with intelligence. What it lacks right now is heart. Utah football went undefeated because it never believed it would lose. Paul Kruger made it a habit to wave his arms in the air every game to get the crowd behind him.
The Ute basketball team could learn from its Sugar Bowl-bound brethren. Would it hurt to raise your voice a level, or pump a fist or let the crowd know that, tonight, you mean business instead of just business as usual?
If this team had even half the madness of Jim Boylen, it’d be taking it all the way to March.
Nick Pappas