After tying for the Mountain West Conference title and snagging the No. 2 seed in the MWC Tournament, Utah is primed and ready.
To the Runnin’ Utes, seeding doesn’t mean much. They know that with the conference being tougher than ever, wins at any stage won’t come easy.
“What I told my team is, “Everybody’s record is 0-0,'” said head coach Jim Boylen. “That’s what’s great about college basketball. You breathe in new life.”
To prove that they are the best team in the conference, Utah needs to have a must-win mentality in the tournament.
Winning the tourney would not only cement a bid to the NCAA tournament, but also help the Utes achieve the goal they set at the beginning of the season8212;to be the best in their league.
“We just want to keep winning in this program,” said center Luke Nevill. “We shared the title; we just want to win the tournament outright, and show everybody who’s on top.”
The Utes are slated to take on No. 7 TCU on Thursday.
They know what the Horned Frogs have to offer, considering the Utes’ MWC-clinching win came against TCU, a team they swept in regular season play.
There are pros and cons to playing a team two games in a row.
The pros for the Utes are that they already know what to expect from TCU’s game plan and will have to make few adjustments to the differences they had in the last game. The potential con is the possibility of getting too big for their britches.
“We’re very confident going into the tournament,” said forward Shaun Green. “We play TCU again. We beat them twice, but we also know that
going into the tournament, everyone’s record is 0-0 and it’s hard to beat a team three times.”
It happened to New Mexico last season when it met up with the Utes in the first round.
The Lobos swept the season series against Utah but couldn’t pick up the win when it counted in the tournament.
Boylen made sure to make his team aware of that.
“There’s always that “is your team ready to play, is your team focused, is your team confident but not overconfident,'” Boylen said.
He put his guys into check during practice and they responded.
Before their last game against TCU, the Utes had two of the best practices they’d had all season. The players were focused and knew they still had room for improvement. Heading into the conference tournament is something any coach wants to see out of his players.
“I think the one thing we have to do is continue to get better,” Boylen said. “We have to practice well.”
That is what Utah has been doing with the back-to-back-to-back game format. Boylen has put emphasis on getting his players ready for the fatigue that will plague them and the other teams that are winning during the next week.
“It’s hard to play back-to-back games, but we just have to push through the pain and the fatigue and just keep playing,” Nevill said.
Being prepared is what winning teams have to do, and winning is what their plan is.
If the Utes beat TCU in the first round, their second-round game will be against either the co-MWC champions New Mexico or No. 6 seed Wyoming Cowboys. The Utes split the season series with the Lobos and went 2-0 against the Cowboys.
In the championship game, Utah could meet up with a slew of good conference teams.
The Cougars are the No. 1 seed heading into the tournament and are a favorite to make it to the final like they did last season. They could play UNLV or San Diego State in the next round, which is tough either way. The hometown team swept BYU in the season series and the Aztecs were 0-2 against the Cougars.
Don’t expect the Utes to be looking that far down the road just yet.
Just as they have all season, they have their sights set on the team ahead of them and don’t want a letdown against TCU.
