We got 14′ of frontcourt help back last night

[GameForAnyFuss]

Lovering and Keller both played!

Lovering looks better than last year. He’s actually playing like a big. His physical presence is improved. So is his footwork. On the flip side, I wasn’t impressed by Keller at all. Looked out of sorts offensively and got outrebounded by smaller opposition.

Anyone else have any thoughts about the team and those two in particular?

[belli1976]

I was there. In from out of town and had to get some Ute sporting event I.

Live by the three, die by the three. Madsen was lights out. But when conference play comes along he will get shut down bigger stronger defenders. Just like last year.

[RustyShackleford]

Shut down? He averaged almost 40% from 3 last year while making the most 3s in the conference

[Anfernee]

🙄

[MG_Ute]

I was there too and was impressed by Little. He’s only a sophomore guard and put up some solid stats. We have a fairly young team that is fun to watch. Unfortunately I’m not sure the talent pool is good enough to get to the tournament though. Lovering looked really good and aggressive. In the few minutes he played he was clearly the best one or two players. Madsen (Gabe) has improved his defense and off ball movement.

[BleedsRedUte]

I like lovering for rim protection and rebounding. Hope he provides a little more inside scoring, so the team can be balanced and score from outside and inside 10 feet.

How does a guy like Keller that has probably played basketball since jr high, not have a better shooting motion? Does a player his size always dunk the ball and never cares about developing his shot. Otherwise, I hope he has some good inside moves and develops his shot with more games, and also provides defense and rebounding. He has a solid build to body up on opposing bigs.

If Little and G Madsen are a threat to score outside, OR drive to the basket, they can develop the drive and pass plays to Lovering and Keller for dunks. This worked great for the Jazz with Gobert not being a great scorer, but good at catching and dunking.

Watching some other Big12 games and knowing we have Kansas, Houston, Arizona, etc., to play this year, it is going to be rough at road games, with what I see so far from the Utes. Hope they develop up with Lovering and Keller back, and at least protect home court.

[UTE98]

From someone who watched Keller a ton in High School, my daughter graduated with him, I saw things about him last night many didn’t. I probably attended 15-20 of his games, including the State Championship game.

#1, he’s a way better player than what CU got with Andrew Crawford this last year. Both were well known in High school here in Colorado, but let’s just say I’d take Keller all day every day and twice on Sundays vs what CU got.

#2, in high school he played with some really good scrappy role players. All of the team including another 6 ft 9 in player could hit the three. Zeller was good from the 3 pt line in high school.

3. Keller in high school could take over games when he wanted to, but I often thought he was a bit lackadaisical. Then when it was crunch time he would absolutely tear out the hearts of his competition.

4. The thing Keller did last night which most impressed me was his physical defense. He never really had to play physical defense in high school, he relied on his athletic ability to block shots and make up/take up space. To see him body up the C for the other team last night gave me a ton of hope he’s gotten much better due to his time at Wake Forest, playing against ACC competition.

5. Is his shooting motion beautiful? No, but trust me he can hit the long ball, and I think he’ll be a great inside/outside guy this year. Looking at his high school 3 pt % he wasn’t as good as I recalled, only about 30%. But he can drive and has an it factor. He may or may not prosper not being the lead dog. But in high school he was a good team player, so I’m not worried.

6. Is it possible to look younger as a Junior in college than a Sr. in High School? Keller looks younger than he did in high school. He won’t likely lead the Utes in many statistical categories, but he’ll do the dirty work and be a good team player.

[Rick Walker]

Did anyone else think Lovering was Branden Carlson for a second because I did😂
But I agree he added much needed height to the team and hopefully they can gel with Keller and Lovering back in the lineup build some good chemistry. If we keep playing well as a team we should be able to surprise some people.

[Minnesota Ute]

I was surprised that he only showed 1 assist in the box score, because I know he had several sharp passes. That is my one big hope for Lawson (other than making he and Ezra making their DAMN free throws) is that he will be a good passer. That is what really differentiated Bogut and one of the things that seems like it’s been lacking from our bigs over the last number of years, is the ability to hit cutters or shooters when the double comes. If he can develop that part of his game, he could be really valuable.

Edit (fixed): Fun Fact, Lawson averaged 0.3 more assists per game last year on 11 less minutes played. So if he can average 1.8 APG on 18 min, its possible he could average 4 per game on 25-30 min per game as the lead dog.

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