After Saturday’s 81-69 home loss to Oklahoma State, the frustration boiled over for Utah coach Alex Jensen.
The Runnin’ Utes, in the first year of a new era under Jensen, have struggled in the best conference in college basketball, winning just one conference game — vs. TCU — in eight tries.
Saturday’s game against Oklahoma State, which had won two Big 12 games this season entering Saturday, seemed like a good chance for Utah to get back in the win column after two straight road losses, to Kansas State and BYU.
Instead, the Utes went cold down the stretch and lost a winnable game — something that is increasingly rare for them in the Big 12.
“That’s the disappointing thing about tonight. Oklahoma State’s a good team, but we’re good enough to beat ‘em and it’s disappointing,” Jensen said.
Postgame, Jensen criticized his team’s “selfish play.”
“Disappointing game tonight. Thought we had a good week of practice, but I think we regressed. I give (Oklahoma State coach) Steve (Lutz) a lot of credit. He was prepared for us tonight, but disappointing because I thought (we were) very selfish tonight,” Jensen said.
“Very selfish and I thought we were getting better at that way, but very, very selfish, individually tonight as a team.”
After losing seven of its eight conference games, can Utah end the final 10-game stretch with some positive momentum and progress, or will the same issues — especially on the defensive side of the ball — continue to show up game after game?
Next up is a Wednesday contest against Arizona State, which has had its own issues and has lost five of its last six. Longtime Sun Devil head coach Bobby Hurley, considered to be on the hot seat in the final season of his contract, is trying to get back on track himself after a rough season in Big 12 play.
However, Hurley doesn’t have a ton of confidence in turning things around this year..
“It’s kind of too late to put things together … Today we played as good of basketball as this team was probably capable of,” Hurley said after an 87-74 loss to rival Arizona on Saturday.
Both Arizona State and Utah have some of the worst defenses in the country, but have offenses that rank in the high 100s nationally, so expect to see a fairly high-scoring affair.
ESPN’s matchup predictor gives the Utes a 59.2% chance to beat the Sun Devils, but after that, they are currently favored in just one remaining game, a home contest against Colorado in the Huntsman Center.
Utah’s tough remaining schedule includes a game at No. 14 Kansas and home games vs. No. 10 Houston and No. 8 Iowa State.
Every single opponent, including Arizona State, is No. 77 or higher in the KenPom rankings, and the Utes face four teams ranked inside the top 14 to close out the season.
Barring a miraculous conference tournament run, Utah’s NCAA tournament hopes have long been dead, and this year will mark 10 consecutive years without the Utes in the Big Dance.
Jensen’s focus to close the season will be to finish as respectfully as possible in a gauntlet of a season while showing some measure of progress heading into next season.
In the offseason, another roster overhaul likely awaits Utah, so the final stretch of the season will give Jensen some important data about who to keep and who to let walk from this current team, along with highlighting the areas where the roster must improve.
Lutz, now in his second season with the Cowboys, knows how tough it is to rebuild a program in the Big 12. The Cowboys went 7-13 in conference play in Lutz’s first year and are now 3-5 this season.
“I don’t think people understand how hard this league is this year. We’re sitting here at 3-5. We were knocking on the Top 25 a month ago and now you’re sitting in this league 3-5,” Lutz said.
Until the Utes substantially upgrade their roster, the losses could keep piling up, but Lutz believes Jensen will get the program turned around in due time.
“It takes a little bit of time to recruit to this conference, and I don’t care how much basketball we’ve all coached, until you coach in this league, you have no idea how hard this thing is. No idea,” Lutz said.
“And especially this year, especially this year, there are zero off nights, and I know that at the end of the day you have to stick with your process and he seems to have a very good process. I love the way they play offensively with their spacing and all that kind of stuff, and I have no qualms in thinking that coach will have it going here.”