Utah Snaps Win Streak with 74-58 Loss to USC

Saturday, February 24

Salt Lake City, Utah

12:30 PM

University of Utah

18-10, 10-7

USC

21-9, 12-5

USC

Utah

2/24/2018 3:16 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Utah-USC | Box Score (PDF)

Collette pours in team-high 14 points for the Utes

SALT LAKE CITY – The Utah Runnin' Utes snapped a five-game winning streak, falling 74-58 to the USC Trojans Saturday afternoon at the Huntsman Center. The loss dropped Utah to 18-10 overall and 10-7 in Pac-12 play, while USC improved to 21-9 on the season and 12-5 in league play.

HOW USC WON
The Trojans led by as many as 17 points in the first half before Utah closed out the period on a 9-2 run and trail 38-28 at the break. The Utes later opened the second half, closing within just six points, down 55-49 with 8:52 remaining in the game, but the Trojans countered with a 22-0 run and never looked back. Utah would go nearly six and a half minutes without a field goal during USC's run.

STAT OF THE GAME
USC forced 15 Utah turnovers and managed to turn those miscues into 22 points. Utah forced 11 turnovers, but scored just nine points in the game. The Trojans tallied just six offensive rebounds in the game, but managed to score on each of those second-chance possessions and outscored the Utes 12-4 in total second-chance points.

WHO STOOD OUT FOR THE UTES
David Collette poured in a team-high 14 points on 7-of-13 shooting. He and Tyler Rawson tied for the team lead with seven rebounds each.

UP NEXT
The Utes will wrap-up the 2017-18 regular season next Saturday, March 3, hosting the Colorado Buffaloes in the season finale. Tip-off is set for 5 p.m. MT inside the Huntsman Center.

POSTGAME QUOTES

Utah head coach Larry Krystkowiak

Whether the Utes ran out of gas or if USC disrupted them …
I'm not going to discredit their effort coming into our building. I do know that when we got two of our key contributors not playing and we played about 38 hours ago and you try to tip off at 12:30 for some reason, I don't know if we had a lot of gas in our tank but I'm not going to be the guy that blew a gasket on the court for some stuff and be a cry baby. It just didn't fit our timing very well in playing a couple of elite teams back to back. You know when you are finishing up at 9:30 one night and tipping off at 12:30 a day and a half later, I felt like we were a little bit gassed but I don't want to take any of the credit away from USC. They made some big-time plays, in the first half they hit a lot of open shots and then the six open shots they missed they got rebounds and guess what they scored 12 points off of those so it was a little bit of a perfect storm, we missed five layups in the first half. Can't miss layups, not at this level of big boy basketball and at the end of the day when you get a layup against a defensive team that is as good as they are, they lead the league in forced turnovers, and when you are presented with a layup you got to make it as simple as that sounds. So, it was a little bit of a perfect storm, in the first half I was super proud of the guys for not folding their tent. We pulled it to within a two-possession game in the second half and we ran out of steam.

If they settled too early for the shots they were taking …
We got really good shots, we charted them. We had seven of our eight first shots were what we called five shots, we try to earn them you know it's not an ill-advised shot so that's the difference in the game. You got to make open shots when you get them, but I didn't feel like we settled. We took what was presented to us and if our guys, the way we are shooting the ball, get a wide open three I'd rather them shoot that then shoot a wide open long layup from 10 feet. It's something that might seem like settling but you get time and a half for points. The game plan was fine, it was just the layups. You don't settle when you miss layups, that's a mistake so it was some of those combinations I thought that hurt us and our turnovers. We got a dose for why they lead our conference in creating turnovers. They have some length, they get out in passing lanes, strong hands, and they were ripping us and doing some things taking it away from us and that was costly but it wasn't a shot selection issue at all.

USC head coach Andy Enfield

On USC's second half performance …
We had called timeout when they cut it to six, and we had gone back to an old reliable play, got the points that we needed. We had some good defense and had some stops, and then we went on that big run. Our guys played great defense tonight and I'm very proud of them, especially during this road trip.

On holding Utah to 58 points in their home gym …
We had a lot of intensity tonight, we put in effort, and we had the will to win. We've got guys that play great defense, we held Colorado to 64 the other day and Utah to 58 today, that's how you win on the road in this league. Especially in two tough places to play, like Salt Lake City and Boulder.