Utopia

Not just their PG; all their perimeter players absolutely abused us off the dribble all over the court…AND they know how to finish — strong layups, fake-outs, pull-up mid-range shots. That’s what skilled, well-rounded players look like.

We play hard, but lack of individual talent and athleticism is glaringly obvious on both ends of the court.…[Read more]

I’ll try. Thanks for the encouragement.

I’d have to see some advanced statistics, but I doubt there is any significant overall decline in FT% and that it would be linked to the rise of AAU influence.

Utah is currently ranked 340/364 in FT shooting (2024 348th, 2023 218th). This is a Utah problem. Players can still shoot, Smith just isn’t getting the ones that can.

The disappearance of…[Read more]

10-24 for the game. The frontcourt was a combined 6-17.

Smith in the postgame presser: “We gotta be able to shoot FTs better than we did. I’m confident that we will do that.” Complete nonsense. This isn’t an aberation, it’s perfectly consistent with the talent/skill-level of the players we have.

Career FT%
Lovering 45%
Ausar 60%
Lohner…[Read more]

Certainly doesn’t seem like there is any reason to be optimistic about the hoops program rising from the dead. Basketball seems like an afterthought with football getting all of the attention now. Unless we find a hoops enthusiast benefactor to put some money into NIL a la TDS, the program seems destined to rot in irrelevance.

I haven’t seen anything impressive whatsoever about Keller (also a newcomer), but he is getting playing time over Dawes. It doesn’t make sense only judging performance and potential. Makes me suspect attitude or off-the-court issues with Dawes.

Smith’s recruiting has been an abject failure. It’s clear he can’t recruit enough P4 level talent to be competitive. His best recruits have been Deivon Smith, Keita, Madsen, Little, maybe Dawes. Even of these, Keita and Madsen are only role/complementary players on a tourney team. Everyone else he has recruited has been mid-major talent at best…[Read more]

Dawes is a sophomore. He’s new to the team, but got decent playing time and was reasonably productive as a freshman. He looked pretty good in the first six games and was very productive in his minutes. He showed so much potential that I thought he could very well end up being our best frontcourt player this year. He was much more productive than…[Read more]

I didn’t see the game but noticed that Dawes didn’t play. He only played 4 min each of the two previous games after averaging about 20 min in the first six games and being pretty productive (was leading the team in rebounding) despite being a little “raw”. I wonder what’s going on with him; haven’t heard anything about an injury. I was pretty high…[Read more]

Really disappointing trajectory. Had such a great start to the season and was growing as a fan favorite, then his play basically fell off a cliff in a matter of a few games. I predicted athleticism and physicality were going to be the challenge for him, but I didn’t think he would become completely irrelevant.

He also got some time early in the 2H and made back to back bad passes, the second directly leading to 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 -…[Read more]

This team is woefully underskilled. I have never seen an entire team miss so many layups.

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 coordination is “fling”. It is truly painful…[Read more]

Just to add: Sharavjamts vs BYU’s Egor Demin is going to be a really interesting matchup of 6’9″ point guards. They have similar skillsets, but I think Demin has superior athleticism and strength/physicality. If Mike has a glaring weakness it’s that he lacks muscle to play more physically. Even against the cupcake competition so far, he’s been…[Read more]

You’re right, that’s a good pass. I misremembered Rose as throwing that pass while scrambling under pressure and remembered in the replay the ball just floating right to the safety.

You can’t overlook how Rose’s head jerked in a manner completely consistent with a facemask grab/pull. I think what logically happened was that it started with a facemask grab/pull, but the hand then slid down and ended up on the jersey, which is the part that could be seen in the replay. There wasn’t a full view of where the hand started and…[Read more]

I agree the receiver was at fault on the INT (I think it was King); however, there was also a safety waiting right in the target area to make a defensive play and Rose threw a weak ball under pressure, so I highly doubt that play converts even if King makes the right cut. Nonetheless I think that play was a major confidence/momentum killer.

Rose…[Read more]

I think they were opening up the playbook (mose passing plays) when things were working in the 2Q, but the positive plays didn’t carry over into the 2H. Then Rose threw that horrible INT at midfield and that really killed the confidence and the offense regressed. Rose has great mobility but his passing was mediocre at best.

Also I think we really…[Read more]