Despite a sloppy start, the University of Utah men’s basketball team trounced the Washington Huskies on Saturday, 85-61.
All of Utah’s starters finished scoring in double digits as Devon Daniels and Parker Van Dyke paved the way with 16 points each. David Collette added 14 points, and Kyle Kuzma had a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds. Lorenzo Bonam rounded out the starting group with 11 points. Overall, the Runnin’ Utes shot 55.7 percent from the floor and 66.7 percent from the charity stripe, and they committed 15 turnovers.
Although head coach Larry Krystkowiak wasn’t happy with how the team played at the start, he likes how they finished the game.
“Parker’s been on fire in practice, he’s been pretty dialed in,” Krystkowiak said. “[We] moved the basketball, and if we don’t turn it over I like what we’re doing.”
Van Dyke made a sloppy pass to open up the game, and he committed a foul on the opposite end of the floor, but he made up for it by making a transition layup shortly after. Utah jumped out to a 6-2 lead. However, UW hit a three-pointer and a couple of layups to go up 9-6.
After a Collette dunk Utah was whistled for its fourth team foul with 15:42 left to play in the first half. The Utes weren’t passing the ball well, and the Huskies picked off three straight passes for three transition layups to take an 18-10 lead, and it forced Krystkowiak to call a timeout.
“I just karate-chopped the grease-board, and said a few expletives, and there wasn’t a whole lot to say,” Krystkowiak said. “We were getting manhandled down low.”
From then on it was all Utah.
The Utes made back-to-back three pointers to make it a two point game, and a layup from Collette tied the game at 18. A three-pointer from Bonam gave Utah a 21-18 lead, and another Collette dunk extended the lead to five points. However, Collette was whistled for a technical foul after throwing the ball back at Washington after the score, but UW missed both free throws.
UW wasn’t able to score for seven and a half minutes as Utah went on a 20-0 run.
“We need to be better, and that was the most intense [Krystkowiak has] been all year because we needed to play smarter, and we need to play harder,” Van Dyke said.
As soon as Washington made a free throw, Carlos Johnson was whistled for a technical, and Bonam made both of those free throws. Washington would make its first field goal in nearly 10 minutes to keep itself in the game, but Utah had a firm double digit lead.
David Crisp hit a long three-pointer to close out the half for UW, but Utah led 44-28 heading into the locker room.
UW opened up the second half with a quick six points to make it a 10 point game. Utah also had a couple of shot clock violations, but the Utes started to find their rhythm, and they soon had another 16 point lead.
After Van Dyke hit a three-pointer and a layup from Daniels, Utah had a 21 point lead. And although UW had cut into this lead to make it a 14 point game, Van Dyke hit another three-pointer to add some more breathing room for the Utes. The Huskies responded with their own three, but it wasn’t enough to stop Utah from running up the score on its way to a 24 point win.
Next up Utah will head on the road to face Oregon on Thursday night at 7 p.m.
@kbrenneisen