After going 1-1 this past weekend in Arizona, the Runnin’ Utes are readying themselves to face the No. 25 USC Trojans at home in the Huntsman Center on Thursday night.
The team suffered its first Pac-12 loss of the season dropping its matchup with the Arizona Wildcats. The Utes got back on track when they took down the Arizona State Sun Devils this past Saturday. While there were plenty of positives in both results, there were a few things to learn from that one win.
The Utes struggled a bit facing the ASU full court press. According to head coach Larry Krystkowiak, they committed some mindless turnovers. Since the team is going to be tested against one of the top teams in the conference this week, he has been implementing more late game scenarios in practice to ready his team for anything that they might face.
At the same time, though, Lorenzo Bonam thinks the team is on the right track.
With a lot of new faces to this Ute roster, turnovers were a problem at the beginning of the season. As of late the team has been doing a better job of cleaning up its play and Bonam thinks that they may have committed a few more turnovers had the ASU game been played a few weeks ago. He is sure that things will come together once the team familiarizes itself with breaking a press.
“You learn from your mistakes quick, and you see that and you just want to be better,” Bonam said. “Once you break a trap, it’s easy to score the ball, because there are so many people behind the play that it’s impossible to try and keep up.”
Freshman Devon Daniels is one of those new faces who is still getting acquainted with how competitive it can be in the Pac-12. While facing a tough USC squad could be daunting for a newcomer, he has the same approach as any other player on the team and he is going to focus on what he needs to do to make an impact.
If Daniels isn’t the one scoring all the points, that’s fine with him.
“It’s a huge test [this weekend],” Daniels said. “They’re really good teams, and if we can play good it’ll definitely say something about us. We have to play together. I have a lot of confidence with every player on my team.”
This sentiment is something that Krystkowiak often echoes.
Krystkowiak always wants the Utes to focus on the team aspect of the game, and with six guys averaging double figures it sure looks that way.
“We don’t have that NBA guy,” Krystkowiak said. “But one of the things I’ve heard recently that I latched on to is, ‘Whether it’s me or whether it’s you, it’s always we.’ And I like that concept with our team.”
Although USC is ranked at the moment, Krystkowiak doesn’t see too many differences from how the Trojans looked in the 2015-16 season compared to this year. He notes that the Trojans have lost one of their star players, but other than that it will be a familiar foe coming into Salt Lake City.
Bonam thinks this will be another good test for the Utes and that it is going to show a lot of people what this team is made of.
“We’re going to find out our team’s mindset more than anything else,” Bonam said. “We played Arizona and it was a tough game. You go into an environment like that and only turn the ball over eight times, that’s good. And since we got a young team, that shows progress.”
Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.
@kbrenneisen