Makes My Eyes Water…

[The Miami Ute]

Watching Utah play basketball this afternoon. Probably the worst half I’ve seen, well probably ever at the Huntsman. Utah is down 39-22 to Saint Mary’s, shooting an eye watering 23.5% from the floor and 50% from the line. It’s one of those games where the basket seems like half the size of the ball instead of vice versa. Performances like this don’t bode well in preparation for the start of the conference schedule.

[Tony (admin)]

Yikes.

[NashvilleUte]

Here we go again… 🤦

[Rick Walker]

Valiant comeback effort, too bad they started off so poorly.

[Utopia]

This team is woefully underskilled. I have never seen an entire team miss so many layups. And of course missed FTs again (58% this game).

The frontcourt is especially bad. We have six 6’8″+ players that have played significant minutes and not a single one of them have decent offensive skills. The word that comes to mind in describing their shooting/finishing coordination is “fling”. It is truly painful watching Lovering trying to figure out how to make a basket that isn’t a dunk — I facepalmed when he airballed a 5-footer at the end of the 1H. He is completely ineffective when he doesn’t have a huge size advantage. I did at least like Lohner’s high energy impact. He’s not very skilled, but he is deceptively athletic, very active and effective at using his football body for rebounds and general physicality. Despite it being his first game, he was by far our best frontcourt player, which tells you just how bad our froncourt is. Dawes has been MIA recently despite having been the team’s leading rebounder; not sure what the deal is.

Sharavjamts has completely disappeared in the last several games; more and more of his minutes have gone to Madsen and Erickson. He looks like he really struggles with the higher level of physicality and has lost all confidence.

Little has become our most important player. Not a great scorer, but pretty much does everything else really well and just a solid, reliable performer at a key position. We’d fall apart without him.

[The Miami Ute]

I was going to make a similar comment about Sharavjamts. It could be that after getting his game on tape, he’s been found out by the opposition. He was absolutely awful in the first few minutes of the first half, was pulled, and wasn’t seen the rest of the game. No muy bueno for Mike…it’s a tell that Smith has lost confidence in him. We’ll see what happens but unless he starts playing better with a quickness, he might be relegated to garbage time minutes.

[Utopia]

He also was in early in the 2H and made back to back bad passes, the second directly resulting in a turnover and fast break bucket; then he got pulled for good.

Even when he was playing well in the first few games there were clear signs physicality was likely going to be an issue/weakness for him. He would get bullied on the defensive end – getting taken to the basket without being able to provide much resistance and not being able to box out his man, giving up offensive rebounds…and this was against cupcake talent. He’s pretty skinny and plays a slower finesse game, so it’s not surprising that higher level athleticism and physicality would give him problems, but hopefully he can find a way to adapt as he does have a good skillset that can help.

[The Miami Ute]

Thanks for the insight. It kind of seems like other teams have zeroed on him because, you’re right…he’s going to have a lot problems with physicality as the season goes along.

[MG_Ute]

I went to the game and had a blast. I agree we are understaffed but come on, we pulled within two! Great effort to fight back. Little is a sophomore guard and had a double double not too far from a triple double. Lohner showed some pretty serious promise. I spoke with Lohner’s parents after and they said he was not yet in basketball shape but still had 8 points and 4 boards in only 20 minutes. I was disappointed in Gabe Reid’s second half. He’s our best player and we need more out of him. Lovering’s 7 and 8 just didn’t cut it either. Great environment though and fun to be there!

[The Miami Ute]

I have season tickets so I go to every game…yeah, it was a fun game to watch, if you were a neutral, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was a loss and that this team has systemic and coaching issues. The poor free throw shooting, for example, has been a hallmark of Smith’s tenure and is unexcusable.

[MG_Ute]

Yeah free throw shooting has been tough. Not sure that’s coaching. I am a huge Smith fan. We just need talent and strongly believe our boosters need to pony up for talent. I’d be really curious to know what our BBALL guys are getting paid NIL wise. We’re definitely one or two good players away from competing. Love Gabe Madsen but he was a no show tonight. Pretty disappointing.

[Rick Walker]

Nah free throws are purely coaching, take ten minutes a day for each player to shoot 100 free throws at least and ten in a row at the end and you’ll have pretty good free throw shooters real quickly

[MG_Ute]

Yeah Rick – I’m sure we’re not doing that. 🙄

[The Miami Ute]

No disrespect, but you lost me when you said that you were “a huge Smith fan.” What exactly has Smith demonstrated during his time at Utah to earn such allegiance? All I’ve seen is three mediocre seasons and the start of a fourth.

[MG_Ute]

Love it. I can see where you’re coming from. I’ve met the guy and spent a little time with him. I really like him. I always wonder if it’s the chicken or egg thing. I think Craig needs talent and in this NIL world I personally believe other programs are out spending the Utah BBALL program by more than we may want to know. Certainly the team down south is. Always hard to tell if good coaching is more important than having talented players. I for one think for whatever reason our boosters don’t like Craig and are withholding NIL money because of it. Otherwise maybe Keita and Smith are playing for us this year because we were willing to pay them. But I totally see where you’re coming from. Craig hasn’t really hit his stride yet and if he gets the blame I just don’t know if that’s because he’s not a good coach or because he lacks the talent to do what he is capable of doing. Man this NIL era is crazy. We need NIL dollars bad.

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