The Miami Ute

But nobody sucks harder than Craig Smith’s Utes.

The buyout is less than $6M. Better to buy him out than go through a season with an empty Huntsman and end up with an 8-25 record in the Big 12.

My guess is that it’ll hit home for Harlan when the Bay Area schools come to town and the only people in the stands are family and friends.

I don’t know how Smith can retain his job. He’s lost all credibility and fan apathy is about to become a thing again.

No matter the end result of this game, you can stick a fork on this program, this roster, and this coaching staff. They’re all done. This team is as irrelevant today as it was when Krystkowiak was fired.

Oh, and then there’s this… UCLA won again tonight. Since the Utes demolished them 90-44, the Bruins have won eight of their last nine games. The only defeat in that period has been a one point loss to Arizona. I have to imagine that UCLA is going to have something pretty special prepared for Utah when they play on Saturday.

I would say it’s the HC’s job to get talent. Three years in, there’s no one Smith can blame or point the finger to if his team is underachieving. I could understand it if the team suffered an epidemic of injuries but that hasn’t been the case. Worster isn’t that talented that the entire team collapses in his absence.

I’m really starting to wonder if Smith has lost this team. This group is just not executing.

Based on what I’ve seeing, the Utes need to go 5-2, with the losses being at Colorado and Oregon, and win a game or two in the PAC tournament to feel good about making the postseason. Anything less than that, and it’s highly likely they’ll be watching the tournament on TV. That loss to ASU has, from a national perspective, taken a lot of the…[Read more]

Union Hish School’s logo is exactly the same as the one from the University of Miami.

Can’t go wrong with that insignia on the right side of the jersey.

The problem is that five of the remaining seven games are away from home and Utah hasn’t won a PAC away game this season, even when playing bad competition. And, to top things off, they’ve been supremely uncompetitive while playing away games. Utah has gotten blown out in every PAC away game they’ve played this season except for the one versus…[Read more]

Well, I think that he can keep his job because the guy that hired him is still his boss and he’s only on Year 3 of a guaranteed six year contract. I’ve been saying that, probably due to money issues, Smith gets at least one more year. Now, if the Utes end the year with an eight game losing streak and ultimately losing record with a talented,…[Read more]

Just as I thought, the loss to ASU has been annotated as a Quad 3 home loss. Any one of those essentially start making you radioactive to the tournament selection committee. If Smith doesn’t right the ship in the remaining five games, I don’t know where we go from there. There might be 100 people in the stands for home games next season.

Here’s a plausible scenario. Utah has three consecutive road games until they come back to the Huntsman to play Stanford. Those games are at USC, UCLA, and Colorado, all places where Utah has not fared well historically in the best of times. If the Utes go 0-3 on that road trip, they will be 10th in the PAC 12 conference standings with four games…[Read more]

I’m originally from Miami, and just north of Miami there’s an university called Florida Atlantic University (FAU). FAU is a commuter school in an urban environment with no fanbase, a high school gym for an arena and low academic standing. They’re easily the 7th or 8th best school (maybe) in the state of Florida. Yet FAU made it to the Final…[Read more]

Frustrating, that’s all I can say. Utah looks it’s still groggy from the 3OT loss to Zona. I can’t emphasize enough how much of a bad loss this would to be in the Utes’ tournament resume.

Maybe only when they play Utah. I mean, they just got blown out at home by a bad Cal team.

Free throw shooting hasn’t improved. Only 4/9 so far this game.