There are only nine more guaranteed games for Utah basketball season — eight more Big 12 regular-season games, plus at least one in the league tournament next month.
That leaves a quickly fading amount of time for first-year head coach Alex Jensen to mold his program and its current players in-season.
With four weeks left in the regular season, Jensen and the Utes are focused simply on finding better consistency.
“(It’s) the same goal as the beginning of the year, get better every game, every day,” Jensen said. “And I think we all learned how good the Big 12 is. There’s no games or weeks off.”
There have been stretches of competitiveness, even in games like the one against Kansas last Saturday in a 71-59 loss to the No. 11 Jayhawks at historic Allen Fieldhouse.
That afternoon, Utah trailed by just two in the second half before an 18-4 run squashed any hopes the Utes could keep it close.
Long lulls have become a signature of this year’s Utah program, and while Jensen appreciates the effort his team is often putting on the floor, he hopes to see his team improve in that area as the Utes prepare themselves for things beyond this season.
“I’ll give them credit. I think we’ve played hard for the most part, and we’ve never given up and we’ve dug ourselves holes that we’ve come back from,” Jensen said.
“My job every day is to help them get better, which I just told them about 10 minutes ago. We’re just trying to be more consistent and not have those three or four minute stretches where we we dig ourselves those holes.”
Finding consistency will continue to be a difficult chore down the stretch in the Big 12.
The Runnin’ Utes (9-14, 1-9 Big 12) have lost 10 of their past 11 games, and it won’t get any easier when Utah returns home for its next game.
No. 3 Houston is headed to the Huntsman Center for a Tuesday night matchup (7 p.m. MST, ESPN2), and the Cougars are one of the hottest teams in arguably the top league in the country.
Houston (21-2, 9-1 Big 12) has won four straight and have lost just once since Thanksgiving. Its two losses are also by a combined seven points.
There are plenty of individual matchup headaches the Utes will have to counter with against Houston, from star freshman guard Kingston Flemings to 6-foot-11 Chris Cenac Jr. to veterans like Emanuel Sharp and Milos Uzan.
That, and coach Kelvin Sampson is one of the top and most respected head coaches in the college.
“Coach Kelvin, there’s not a better coach in the conference. I think there’s a lot for myself and us to learn from them, because they do what they do and they’re really good at it,” Jensen said. “He gets the players that fit him well.
“He’s one of the few coaches that’s won everywhere he’s gone. It’ll be a good challenge for our guys and I was trying to warn them today that this will be the hardest playing team that we’ve played against.”
In the loss to Kansas, the Utes were without backup guard Obomate Abbey, which forced Utah to play 6-6 Seydou Traore more at the 2 and 6-8 Kendyl Sanders at the 3.
It gave the Utes a chance to see how they would compete with a larger lineup, and that experience could pay off in the long run.
“Seydou at the 2 gives us a little more size, and it was good. Those were conversations we had at the beginning of the year, before we had some injuries and other things,” Jensen said.
“In the future, it’d be great to be able to have that luxury of going big and small and being able to change up the lineups. We were kind of forced to at Kansas and it actually worked out pretty good for stretches.”
In the short term, barring an unlikely run to the Big 12 tournament title at T-Mobile Center next month, which would earn the Utes an automatic bid in the NCAA tournament, Utah’s season will end in Kansas City about a month from now.
Of Utah’s eight remaining games in the regular season, five would currently qualify as Quad 1 games, and the other three are all Quad 2.
The Utes, at No. 126, are the lowest-rated Big 12 team in the NET rankings by a sizable margin.
While Utah will be an overwhelming underdog in the majority of its remaining games, there are contests — like at home against UCF on Feb. 21 and March 3 at home against Colorado — where the odds are a bit friendlier.
There are still lessons to be learned — but the clock is ticking.
It’s ticking faster than Jensen’s previous decade-plus when he was an assistant coach at the NBA level.
“There’s a lot fewer games (at the NCAA level), and in the NBA, sometimes you have the luxury to have a bad week or two, or a couple of those. In college, you can’t — a bad week could be the difference in a lot of things," Jensen said.
What can Utah learn about itself between now at the end of the season?
Games remaining for Utah
NET rankings, Quad calculation as of Feb. 9
- Feb. 10 — vs. No. 3 Houston (NET: 6; Quad 1)
- Feb. 15 — at Cincinnati (NET: 71; Quad 1)
- Feb. 18 — at West Virginia (NET: 63; Quad 1)
- Feb. 21 — vs. UCF (NET: 44; Quad 2)
- Feb. 24 — vs. No. 5 Iowa State (NET: 5; Quad 1)
- Feb. 28 — at Arizona State (NET: 82; Quad 2)
- March 3 — vs. Colorado (NET: 72; Quad 2)
- March 7 — at Baylor (NET: 46; Quad 1)
- March 10-14 — Big 12 tournament (Kansas City)
