GameForAnyFuss

6’9″ 215 lb forward. Averaged 6.6/4.1. AAC all-freshman team. He was a big target for Utah in 2023 but we missed him for Rice (???). He also had offers from Houston, Texas, K State, and BYU-Provo Campus, among others.

Sorry, it’s 100% portal for me. The benefits of upperclassmen are amplified in basketball. The increased maturity, ability to cope with pressure, and the adult body are critical.

Unless we’ve got a sure-fire prospect, I don’t care if we land another high school kid ever again. Pretty much nobody plays all 4 at the same school any more, so just…[Read more]

The elephant in the room is the terrible recruiting of HS players.

The good news is, high school recruiting doesn’t matter any more. Like, not in the slightest. Every team not named UCONN will be living off transfers.

What matters now is how you recruit the portal and Smith has been OK at that. I just saw that Great Osobor (the behemoth center…[Read more]

Update on the awful officiating from last night: Turns out the ref who was missing all the calls and T’d up Craig after he told the guy he’d missed two in a row, was former BYU-Provo Campus baseball player and baseball coach Mike Littlewood. There’s no way someone should ever be assigned to ref a rival school.

That was the funnest game of the year. The team played pretty well and the crowd was really into it – shades of the good old days at the Hunty. Everyone was giving it to VCU and giving it to the refs (when they deserved it, which was often). Such a blast last night.

The only negative is I’m certain Keita is going to transfer. His body language is…[Read more]

This seems like a good time to repeat what I said the other day: Football success has ruined Utah fans. Now we will only spend our time and money on winners.

I see sold-out basketball arenas in Logan and Provo and I wonder how much of it is because of their garbage football programs. They see basketball season on the horizon and say…[Read more]

You just described the problem with Utah fans: We don’t support a team unless it’s already a winner.

Problem is, it’s hard to create a winner without already having support. Without the cash flow and full stands, you won’t get high quality players. Did you see what the arenas at USU and BYU-Provo Campus looked like when they really stunk? They…[Read more]

Hmmmm…longtime U basketball fans know that we never say or write their name under any circumstances. And I’m not talking about BYU-Provo Campus.

It’s not the fact that BYU-Provo Campus lost that makes them smack-worthy. It’s the fact that they always set these sky-high expectations and always fall flat. I mean, they were seriously talking about winning the natty this year.

Look, the NCAAs are hard. These are the 64 best basketball teams in the country (in theory) and half of them go home…[Read more]

I am not sure what needs to be done other than getting a better team.

Maybe it would help if fans started showing up.

For the record, I don’t think you’ll get a better team until after fans come. Good players will go to where there’s full arenas and good NIL deals. You don’t get those things until you have fans.

To better calibrate this poll, I would like to see another one that says, in effect, “rate your excitement level for Utah basketball period”. I don’t really care about the excitement level of people who don’t like Utah basketball, or college basketball at all. Obviously if your excitement level for Utah basketball is always zero, then your…[Read more]

Baseball
Softball
T&F
Lacrosse
Beach volleyball

Plenty of good sports – and athletes deserving of our support – this spring. Football doesn’t start until late August. Why waste part of your life doing nothing but pining for a sport that’s still half a year away? There’s plenty of sports to watch right now.

I dunno…I had fun this year. With the exception of the ASU loss, I really enjoyed all our home games. $90 for lower bowl season tickets is still the best value in all of sports.

Carlson played despite basically having a prosthetic arm. It’s hard to think of a player in any sport who’s given more to the Utah program than BC has. One of my all-time favorites.

I’m still trying to figure out what happened. 1 of our 3 competitors in the women’s 20km didn’t finish (very rare in XC skiing). Had she finished – in any place – it would have given us enough points to win the title.

Welp…the worst did happen. We didn’t do well, Colorado skied out of their minds, and they won by a final score of 569.5 to 567.5. It doesn’t get much closer than that. The streak is over – we finished 2nd.

Sorry for the late update – the NCAA decided to run the slalom as a night event, probably to avoid getting in the way of civilians. The men’s race didn’t wrap up until almost 11:00.

It wasn’t a great night for Utah, but it wasn’t a bad night either. The name of the game in slalom (when you’re interested in a team championship) is to make sure…[Read more]

I agree with everything you said…except #5.

1. With the portal being such a huge part of college basketball, none of us have any idea what level of team we’ll be fielding.
2. Being in the Big 12 might increase our chances of getting into the tournament, even with a worse record. This year there are three teams with losing conference records…[Read more]

Whew! Yeah, we are absolutely killing it two days into the championships. That’s a nearly insurmountable lead at halftime.

We lost to Colorad9 twice this year, but it looks like we’re likely to get the last laugh against those Birkenstock-wearing potheads. If we can avoid total disaster in the slalom and come away with a 20-point lead or so, I…[Read more]

Honestly I’m not sure. We have 3 events left and 2 are XC. We’re traditionally strong in XC, but I’m not sure about this year (we graduated a bunch of studs last year). And the one alpine event remaining – slalom – is the most unpredictable. It’s a game of inches where one misplaced ski tip in one turn can mean the difference between winning and…[Read more]