The University of Utah men’s basketball team got off to the start it wanted to at Arizona State on Saturday.
The Runnin’ Utes were up 14-5 at the 15:03 mark of the first half, as Keanu Dawes and Terrence Brown lifted them to the big lead at Deseret Financial Arena in Tempe, Arizona.
Things fell apart after that, though, as Arizona State’s zone defense stifled the Utes much of the day in a 73-60 Sun Devils victory.
Utah ended up shooting 39% for the game and 34.5% in the first half, while Arizona State was 49.1% from the field (53.8% in the second half) and made 9 of 17 3-pointers.
The Utes, too, had a pair of extended droughts in each half.
In the first half, Utah went more than eight minutes between scores as Arizona State finished the stanza on a 20-5 run to take a 34-24 lead into the break.
In the second half, Utah had a three-minute stretch when it didn’t score and the Sun Devils pushed their lead from 59-53 to 68-53 with just 3:52 to play to seal the win.
“The problem was when we passed it. (It was) one of our worst pass games of the year,” Utah coach Alex Jensen said in his postgame interview on ESPN 700 AM.
Again, Jensen saw guys on the offensive side trying to make plays happen on their own.
“It was discouraging because I think it was one of our more selfish games of the year,” he said. “You got to use your teammates and if you want to be good, whether it’s individually, you need your teammates, and I thought we did a poor job of passing.
“I think we tried too hard to do it on our own and score.”
The loss leaves Utah (10-19, 2-14 Big 12) going into the final week of the regular season humbled after it had shown signs of improvement over the previous two weeks.
Brown, the Utes’ leading scorer, had four points, two rebounds and an assist in the game’s first three minutes before picking up his second foul with 16:55 to play until halftime.
He ended up with just eight points on 4 of 12 shooting, while adding five rebounds and two assists.
While Dawes (16 points, four rebounds, two assists) and Don McHenry (14 points, four 3-pointers) had solid days, it wasn’t enough for Utah, which was swept in the season series by the Sun Devils.
While the Utes only had eight turnovers one game after giving up a season-high 18 against Iowa State, their offense struggled to attack the Arizona State zone and instead let the Sun Devils dictate things.
That had an effect on the other end of the court, as Arizona State took advantage on the offensive end. Six of the Sun Devils’ nine 3-pointers came in the first half.
Maurice Odum led four Sun Devils in double-figures. He scored 15 points while also posting four assists, a block and a steal.
Santiago Truet added a double-double (12 points and 10 rebounds) and three blocks, while Massamba Diop (14) and Anthony Johnson (13) also scored in double-figures.
“I thought we came out and we started out great,” Jensen said. “We executed, played well, we guarded, we passed, did a great job. The lesson to learn is if something works, keep going back to it, but unfortunately (we) couldn’t sustain that for very long.”
The Utes still had some fight in them, cutting into the Arizona State lead to a two-possession game three times in the second half.
Both times, though, the Sun Devils had an answer.
Lucas Langarita, the mid-year addition who had missed the team’s past 12 games, was a catalyst when Utah made it a 43-39 game 6 ½ minutes into the second half.
First, Langarita hit a long jumper as the shot clock wound down. Then on Utah’s next possession, he passed to Dawes, who cut to the hoop and scored on a layup.
Langarita then rebounded a miss on ASU’s next possession and quickly pushed the ball upcourt and found McHenry for a 3 in transition to make it a four-point game.
Langarita, though he showed plenty of rust and turned the ball over twice, had two points, two rebounds, an assist and a steal in 16 minutes.
“It was nice to have Lucas out there today. I think he helps us because it gives us more depth,” Jensen said.
Following a timeout, the Sun Devils quickly pushed their lead back to double-digits at 49-39 on a pair of 3-pointers after that Utah spurt.
Later in the second half, the Utes made it a six-point game at 57-51 and 59-53 on back-to-back possessions, using a 7-0 run capped by a Dawes 3 to get back into it.
Again, Arizona State had an answer. This time, the Sun Devils used a 9-0 run over a 3:13 span to make it 68-53 with 3:52 to play.
“The difficult thing about this game is (that we) replicate the same mistakes you made in the first one (against ASU), and it’s just the mindset of, how do I fit in the group and not about what am I going to get out of the game today.”
Up next for Utah is its home finale against Colorado next Tuesday (7 p.m. MST, ESPN+). The Buffaloes are coming off a 102-62 shellacking against No. 5 Houston on Saturday.
Then the Utes will finish the regular season at Baylor on March 7 before heading to the Big 12 tournament to end the season.
With one week left in the regular season, Utah is in line to be the No. 16 seed in the Big 12 tournament.
“Like I say, for me, for the coaches and the players, it’s another opportunity to learn, compete and get better,” Jensen said, “and hopefully we can we can do a better job at not replicate the same mistakes we made.”