The Runnin’ Utes are on the road this week for their first official away game of the season. Utah will face Wichita State on its home court, and the Utes hope some of the success they found against the Shockers last season will transfer over to Saturday’s game.
When the Shockers visited Salt Lake City last year, the Utes pulled out a 69-68 overtime win. This year, head coach Larry Krystkowiak knows his team cannot have any scoring droughts, something the Utes have struggled with at various times early on this season. This is something that not only the Wichita State players will take advantage of, but also their crowd.
The Utes will instead need to continue working the ball inside to Jakob Poeltl, who has been having his way with any defender assigned to guard him.
“It’s not a team where we want to start the game shooting threes,” Krystkowiak said. “I think we’ve established the post presence with a few guys, and if we can start hitting the open ones and start hitting the wiser shots at better times, I think it can be a deadly combination for us offensively.”
Utah will also need to find ways to expose this Wichita State defense, which Krystkowiak knows will come as a challenge. However, to really get going on offense, he knows his team is going to have to find a way to stop Ron Baker and Fred VanVleet on the other end of the court, the two leading seniors for this Wichita State program.
Against the Utes last season, Baker scored 15 points and VanVleet had 13.
“They play really hard,” Krystkowiak said. “They got Baker and VanVleet — you’d think they’d be gone by now. They play the game the right way. They’re not going to beat themselves — that’s probably the biggest thing.”
Krystkowiak has been working his team harder than usual because he is positive this game will be one of their toughest matchups, even though Wichita State is only 4-4 on the season. Although one of the main focuses for this year’s squad has been defense, Krystkowiak thinks the offensive game will play just as crucial of a role when it comes to facing the Shockers.
“We’ve got to pump it up from here on moving forward,” Krystkowiak said. “If we get back to thinking about what’s really important and moving the ball and taking good shots and not complicating things, I think that’s going to help our offensive field goal percentage.”
One player who has been working on improving his shooting percentage is Brandon Taylor, but like Krystkowiak said, he’s been working on finding open teammates before looking for his own shot.
Taylor also understands that almost all the players on Wichita State can be a threat whenever their name is called. He’ll be counting on his team to keep it together so the Runnin’ Utes can walk out with a win.
“They have a lot of pieces to the puzzle, so we got to be focused and contesting every shot,” Taylor said. “We need to be poised, and everyone needs to come together and support each other. The five guys out there, in a hectic environment, we need to play together and show what we’ve been doing.”
Tip-off is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. CT.
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