OUTSIDE THE Huntsman Center, Tuesday night, a dozen or so fans waited, hoping to score tickets to the Utah-Wake Forest basketball game. What few tickets there were to be found were being sold by scalpers for as much as $75 apiece. Not exactly the going price for an ordinary Utah basketball game, but this isn't your ordinary Utah basketball team.
If not quite ready for prime time, the Utes are at least the 1997 equivalent of the Honda Accord. They offer, as they say in the commercials, quality at an affordable price. For under $20 bucks you can get a good seat to see one of the best teams in the nation, and still have change left over for pizza. In comparision to NBA tickets, Ute tickets don't cost you an arm and a leg, or even a finger or toe.The problem Tuesday wasn't so much price as availability. Since this was New Year's Eve, and since the No. 7-ranked Utes were hosting the No. 2-ranked Demon Deacons, tickets weren't easy to come by. You were more likely to get your hands on a Tickle Me Elmo than tickets to the game. On a night when Utah fans hoped to ring in the New Year with a win over Wake Forest, nobody was giving up their seats.
Building up games like Tuesday's of course, has its problems. Often, like New Year's Eve celebrations, such games turn out to be a big disappointment. You end up going home and asking, "Is that all there is?"
In this case, that didn't happen. Though the Utes fell 70-59, the game never had the feel of a disappointment. It had more of a nice-but-no-cigar feel. It could have been better but it could have been a lot worse.
"The sad thing about it," said Utah coach Rick Majerus on his post-game show, "is I don't remember a lot of New Year's Eves. But I'll remember this one as the one we lost to Wake Forest. But it could have been a lot worse."
For all but the final six minutes, the contest lived up to every expectation. Utah's Keith Van Horn and Wake Forest's Tim Duncan were in rare form most of the night. Van Horn, who missed last weekend's game at Cal-Irvine due to a bout with the flu, came back to score 24 points before tiring later in the game. Duncan finished with 23 points and 16 rebounds.
"We threw the house at Duncan," said Majerus. "I don't know . . ."
In some ways, the game exceeded even the buildup. It could well have been a disappointment. Post-Christmas games, with teams looking ahead to their all-important conference schedules, often turn into blowouts, or worse, sloppy, indifferent exercises in futility. But the Utes and Deacons started and finished with serious intent. They weren't fooling around. Van Horn began the night by scoring Utah's first nine points.
Despite a few problems - not the least of them being only 33 percent shooting from the field for the game and 62 percent from the free throw line - the Utes persisted. They led 30-27 at the half and weren't the least bit intimidated by Wake Forest or its All-America center. Whenever Duncan touched the ball he was mugged by three white shirts.
Duncan, however, remained unfazed. He treated the Utes like an annoyance, but not a problem. He simply faked and spun and pivoted, banking in shots near the basket. The Utes couldn't have contained him with a butterfly net.
Utah led by three early in the second half and trailed by only four with 7:02 left. But the end was looming. Three different Deacons accounted for four 3-point shots down the stretch, and the game drew slowly out of reach. Though the Utes went down shooting - Van Horn made a trey with 17.7 seconds remaining to cut the lead to eight - the matter had been decided beforehand. The Deacons would prevail.
The Utes' downfall was in part due to the tiring of its players, and in part due to its youth. Four freshmen - Hanno Mottola, Jordie McTavish, David Jackson and Jeff Johnsen - were thrown into a big-time game against a group of veteran Wake Forest players. Van Horn, Doleac and Miller tired under the Deacons' steady pressure.
Still, the Utes weren't devastated with the loss. They stayed close enough to win against the No. 2-ranked team in the country. They could have buckled under the pressure, or written it off as a non-conference game, or acquiesced in light of their talent disadvantage, or panicked in the face of the Deacons' shooting. They did none of the above.
"We might go all year and not have a bigger win than this. That's how much I think of Rick Majerus and the Utah program and Utah fans," said Wake Forest coach Dave Odom.
So while First Night didn't give the Utes an upset win, it did give them something to consider. And it gave their fans a reason to figure that even without winning on Tuesday, 1997 may not be so bad after all.