Runnin' Utes Rally Past Aggies for NIT Victory

Wednesday, March 14

Salt Lake City, Utah

7:00 PM

University of Utah

20-11

UC Davis

22-11

UC Davis

Utah

3/14/2018 10:55 PM | Men's Basketball

Box Score Utah-UC Davis | Box Score (PDF)

Utes erase 11-point deficit, comeback to win 69-59

SALT LAKE CITY – Utah senior Justin Bibbins scored a game-high 21 points and the Utah Runnin' Utes managed to erase an 11-point first half deficit en route to a 69-59 win over the UC Davis Aggies in first-round action of the NIT Wednesday evening at the Huntsman Center.

The No. 2 seeded Utes (20-11) were down four points at halftime, but came out of the break and outscored the No. 7-seeded Aggies (22-11) by 26 points over the final two quarters, on the way to the 10-point victory.

UC Davis opened the game with a three-pointer and later went on a 6-0 run to take an early 9-2 lead. Utah closed out the remainder of the first quarter outscoring the Aggies, 9-8, but UCD took a 17-11 lead into the second quarter.

Utah opened the second quarter on a 6-2 run to cut the deficit to two points, but UCD's 6-0 run pushed the lead back to nine points. Gabe Bealer and Sedrick Barefield got the Utes back into the game with three-pointers – two from Bealer and one from Barefield – but the Utes trailed 33-29 at the half.

The Aggies came out of the break scoring the first six points of the third quarter and pushed its lead to 10 points, up 39-29, but the Utes would go onto outscore UCD 18-9 the rest of the way and trailed by just one point heading into the fourth quarter.

Donnie Tillman opened the fourth quarter with a bucket to give the Utes its first lead of the game, up 49-48 with 9:48 left to play in the contest and the home squad never looked back. Utah would go onto outscore the Aggies 22-11 in the final quarter of play.

Utah advances to the second round of the NIT and will host the No. 3-seeded LSU Tigers (18-14) next Monday, March 19, at the Huntsman Center, with a tip-off set for 7 p.m. MT. The contest will be televised on ESPNU.

GAME NOTES
• Utah moved to 12-12 all-time in NIT games, while picking up its first NIT victory since 1992.
• The Utes are now 3-0 all-time against UC Davis, with all three victories coming in Salt Lake City. It was the first postseason meeting between the two teams.
• With tonight's victory, Utah picked up all-time win No. 1,800. Utah now has an all-time record of 1,800-991.
• Bibbins led the Utes in scoring for a third straight game and for the 13^th time this season. It also marked his third straight 20-point game and eighth overall on the year.
• Tyler Rawson and Donnie Tillman both scored 11 points on the night. Rawson led the team with nine rebounds and for Tillman, this was his second double-digit scoring effort in the past three games. He has scored 10+ points in 11 games this season.
• Utah shot just 21.4 percent from the field in the first quarter, but followed with shooting percentages of 62.5 percent, 53.8 percent and 50.0 percent in the final three quarters, respectively. Utah finished shooting 44.7 percent, while limiting the Aggies to just a 39.7 percent effort.
• The Utes finished the game with 7-of-28 (.250) from a newly expanded three-point line. The NIT is experimenting with a deeper three-point line, extended by approximately 1 foot 8 inches to the same distance used by FIBA for international competition (22 feet 1.75 inches).

POSTGAME QUOTES

Utah associate head coach Tommy Connor

On playing in the NIT…
We knew UC Davis was a really good team. Our guys new it too, and we prepped them for it. They're unbelievably coached and they have really good players. You can say 'Are you taking a team lightly in the NIT' or 'Are you disappointed you're there?' The two practices we had were enthusiastic and spirited. We were excited to play. Obviously coming off the Pac-12 tournament loss of a game we pretty much controlled it stung the next day. But, Monday and Tuesday were really good practices and the guys were prepared, and that's a really good team we beat.

On playing after Krystkowiak's Ejection …
I think it fired them up. I wasn't going to calm them down. I think he didn't go into that wanting to get ejected, but he was going to make a strong point he didn't like some of the things that were happening. Our guys rallied together, we have good senior leadership. The nice thing was being able to chip away at that lead and at least make it within reason at half. We felt good about it at half to come back, and I felt in the second half we were really good defensively.

On stepping in as a head coach …
It's different from sitting in the chair and making some suggestions, now I have to make some decisions. But, we have a great staff, and this isn't about me coaching it's about our players winning. I told them at half that this has nothing to do with coach getting ejected and me taking over, this is about them. They knew what to do on the floor and we just gave them a little guidance. I've got a lot of grey hair and some receding, so it's not all that new. I'm just glad we won, I would have felt really bad if we would have lost.

On finishing the game in the fourth quarter …
I thought we executed really well, we got the right guys the ball. Justin, like he's done all year, bailed us out with some timely threes. Tyler made some nice plays and Donnie gave us a lift offensively, and the other guys were solid all around. We pleaded at the timeouts that we were taking away what they wanted to do, we were switching a lot of their stuff. The only way they were scoring was beating us to the paint, and it was middle. We kept stressing don't let them get middle, get them baseline, and we did a better job with that. Really proud of our guys, they gutted it out, that's a really hard team to guard and they have really good players. We just picked it up one on one and had some great stops.

UC Davis head coach Jim Les

Thoughts on the game …
It is a tough one. That was an emotional locker room. I can't tell you or necessarily put into words how grateful we are as a staff for what this team did and the ride they took us on. They had so many excuses along the way this year to nail it in and take a different course and they have a championship pedigree. They bonded together and they fought, competed at a high level, and I'm not sure I have been more proud of a group of guys for what they had to go through and then what they were able to achieve, so special. Then, the seniors. The last one is so abrupt and all of the sudden it ends and the ride ends and so that was emotional. I think about Michael [Onyebalu] and where he has come from. He's got three titles in four years. Pretty darn good in a guy who worked his way up from a non-scholarship walk-on to a starter role on this team. I'm not sure I have ever had a guy ascend like he has. Then, Arell [Hennings], he's two for two. That's a pretty good win percentage. Two years here and two championships. Being a back-up point guard, and I've been there, that's not an easy job, not an easy role. He embraced it and he helped this team, so I couldn't be more proud of those seniors and that team.

On the season …
As a staff we kept saying, "Hey, we are not looking back. We are not reflecting yet." Now it's time to reflect. We are not going to look forward but we are going to reflect on what this group did and some of the special memories and moments that we all got to live through and experience. Then we will start, in a few weeks, start to worry about next year and prepare for that. I did think that when you look at a couple of our second halves late in the year, we have a lead against Fullerton and we have a lead here tonight. The numbers start to get to us a little bit. The guys were a little bit gassed and then we had some guys get banged up tonight and this group will never make those excuses, so I am going to say it for them. They just weren't the same that they were maybe three weeks ago and that's a large part of just wearing down.