Utah Looms Large

Sitting at what is now 4-3, we find ourselves more than halfway through the nonconference season with some work to do. Two early losses in the Old Spice Classic and then another L at home to Boston College does not look good, but when you look at the entire season as a whole, none of those are particularly BAD losses. Sure, Alabama may look like a black eye on our resume when it is all said and done, but Marquette and Boston College are both good teams. While I don’t think BC is a tournament team this season, they will definitely be in the conversation and should be a higher seed in the NIT.

Having said all of that, these remaining nonconference games are going to be huge for this team. Utah has already beaten Illinois, and they play in a very tough arena over in the Salt Lake state. After being a bubble team last season, early on this season it looked as if Utah would be one of the top teams in the Mountain West Conference. But with two bad losses to Idaho and Seattle had the Utes reeling. Enter Illinois. The Utes then turned it all around and took down the Fighting Illini in a thriller, 60-58. We now have to go in and take care of business. This is an opportunity to be a good (and thus far, only) road win.

I think Beilein will have the guys ready to go. The three-point shooting is slowly starting to come around, and if we can just play better team defense I don’t think we will have a problem with this game. Considering our team has not been able to put together a really great game yet this year, I think we are due sooner rather than later.