Runnin’ Utes subdue St. Thomas shooters, roll to comfortable win with Pac-12 play looming

While most sports fans were focused on football Saturday, Utah men’s basketball coach Craig Smith and his team were trying to figure out how to prepare for St. Thomas, a small Minnesota school that has focused its success on shooting 3-pointers.

The Utes, however, forced the Tommies to rare off night from long range and gave all of their future opponents something new to prepare for en route to a 95-66 victory at the Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.

Gabe Madsen scored 15 points and led five players in double figures as Utah improved its record to 5-3.

Smith admitted he still has a lot to learn about this year’s team. and its non-league mixture of other schools of still-unknown quality is slowly helping him prepare better for when the Utes start the Pac-12 schedule next Thursday at home against a known quality team — undefeated Arizona.

“I’m not sure how I feel about playing league games in December … not much I can do about it,” he said, “but we’ll learn a lot about ourselves really fast.”

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The recent Florida road trip was helpful, even though the Utes won just one of three games. Smith, however, said he was glad about how the squad reacted playing on a holiday weekend in front of a subdued crowd of about 5,000 that was also missing its student section, the MUSS.

“We took control early. We had chances to blow them out, but then made some silly mistakes,” said Smith. “They had our attention because of their unorthodox play.”

The Tommies’ unusual style was their concentration of 3-point shooting. The Tommies made nine treys in a close loss to nationally ranked Creighton earlier this month and boasted one of the nation’s top shooters, Riley Miller.

Miller, however, was 0 for 3 from long range Saturday, and St. Thomas never gathered any momentum. The Tommies stayed close, however, until the Utes’ 7-foot center, Branden Carlson, made a pair of important plays late in the first half.

With the Utes ahead 34-24, Carlson blocked a shot by the Tommies’ Will Engels at the 3-point line that resulted in a shot-lock violation. Then, after a Utah timeout, Carlson caught a half-courtlong pass from guard Rollie Worster and scored on a layup to end the half.

“Rollie used to be a quarterback in high school,” Smith said. “He made a great read and fired that pass right on a line. It was a great play and a great way to go into the locker room.”

Smith also noted that most of the St. Thomas starters had played close to 15 minutes by that time, too, while the Utes substituted freely.

The second half was all Utah, and a series of 3-pointers, led by Madsen, eventually built the margin to as many as 32 points.

Lazar Stefanovic, Marco Anthony, Bostyn Holt and Keba Keita also had a few highlight reel plays that made this game memorable.

“We were really looking for someone to step forward,” said Stefanovic, who made 2 of 3 threes and finished with 12 points.

Worster was perfect from long range on two tries and also had a team-best seven assists and controlled most of the offensive sets that only had seven turnovers.

St. Thomas fell to 5-3 on the season. Engels had 16 points for the Tommies, who will be in the region again on Dec. 10 when they play another non-league game at Idaho State.