On the Runnin’ Hoops podcast at the 15 minute mark, GM Wes Wilcox talks about what type of players Utah is looking for in 2026/2027. I like the direction they are aiming for and understand what they are trying to build.
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Neither here nor there, but i think Larry K would absolutely kill it in the NIL era, assuming our boosters would give him the necessary funds.
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Interesting read on USU basketball. It states that in 2024 USU had $800k in NIL and $2.4 mil for 2025. Falsev, who was once a Ute commit, has another year of eligibility after this season.
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Utah has sucked for 21 years (save three very good seasons and maybe three pretty decent ones), yet Utah St keeps winning 25 games a year despite getting a new coach every three seasons.
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So the NCAA Tournament starts today. I’ve commented before that it’s hard for me to get into it when Utah isn’t involved. So, I guess it has been a long, long time since I’ve followed it closely. Sigh. Since Utah is on the outside looking in once again, I thought I’d compile some rankings a of my favorite Utah NCAA Tournament runs.
1- 1998: What else could be at the top? What a magical ride. As fans, we could debate all day whether this run or the 2004 or 2008 football seasons are the best in Utah athletics history. But for five games, Utah basketball has never been better, especially the Elite 8 and Final Four games. Wow!
2- 1997: I actually think the 1997 team was more talented. You had four future NBA draft picks in Van Horn, Doleac, Miller, and Mottola. The Sweet 16 win over Stanford was a thriller. And if Miller doesn’t hurt his hand against Kentucky, maybe Utah gets to the Final that year (though, as usual, Kentucky was so talented).
3- 1991: This was such an unexpected season. It was Majerus’ first full season, and it followed several years of mediocrity. Almost out of nowhere, Utah goes 30-4 and gets to the Sweet 16 with a deep roster of one star (Josh Grant) and a bunch of players who knew their roles. The season ended with a loss to one of the best college teams of all time (UNLV).
4- 2015: Maybe a dark horse pick, but I’d loved this Delon-Wright/Jakob Poetl-led team. The Georgetown game was great, and Utah more than held its own in the Sweet 16 against Duke.
5- 2005: Another Sweet 16 run. Another loss to Kentucky. I thought this was the year Utah had a great shot to beat UK. It was just an off night for the Utes. I also thought Utah was seeded too low that year (6). I think the MWC Tournament final loss to UNM kept Utah from a 4 or 5 seed.
6- 1996: This would rank higher if Utah hadn’t been obliterated in the Sweet 16 to Kentucky, 101-70. However, it must be noted that the 1996 UK squad was incredibly loaded with nine future NBA players.
7- 1983: I was pretty young, so I vaguely remember this run. But Utah got to the Sweet 16 after nice wins over Illinois and UCLA. A loss to eventual champion NC State was the end.
A few disappointing runs:
1- 1999 (Second-round upset ended Utah’s 23-game win streak)
2- 1995 (Second-round loss to Mississippi St.)
3- 2015 (Obliterated by lower-seed Gonzaga in round 2)
4- 2002 (Majerus’ only first-round loss at Utah)
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The 83 year was memorable for us old timers. Finished the WAC in a 3 way tie with BYU and UTEP. WAC didn’t have a tourney yet and due to sweeping BYU (including an epic 3OT thriller in Provo) Utah won the tie breaker and auto bid to the tourney. Beating the Bruins was magnificent back in an era when their run of 6 titles in a row and 8 out of 9 was fresh in our minds.
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My point has been that you need a program. Not renting one off players even lottery picks. Utah State seems to have a program that is a throughline and even endures multiple coaching changes. Utah on the other hand goes shopping for a new team every year. So ■■■■■■■ stupid.
If you want to see what wins championships watch the last six minutes of last year’s title game. Florida and Houston, loaded with experienced players who had been with the programs, no ones and dones, played maniacal defense. Houston gets the ball with 24 seconds left and down 2 and Florida prevents it from getting a shot off. My friend, a Florida fan, made me watch it. It was beautiful and torture.
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Second favorite- 1966 with Jerry Chambers winning the tournament MVP. Lost in the semis to Texas Western, which went on to pound Kentucky. As you probably all know, TW was the first all-black championship team.
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I think ideally you have both. Clearly need continuity and program players, preferably starters not just bench riders who know the system inside and out.
But just as talented players are a risk to bolt, you need to have a plan to integrate talented transfers and even get to the point where we land 1-2 the one-and-dones (max).
Arizona has both Jaden Bradley, a 3 year player at AZ after transferring from Alabama and the Big-12 POY, and Braden Burries, a FR one-and-done who projects as possibly the next Jamal Murray (who was also a one-and-done, at UK)
BYU was pretty good until the continuity guy Saunders got hurt, then they stumbled.
We have a long way to go. So many good teams in the Big-12, and 4 elite teams, sometimes 5 if Baylor is peaking. If a big upgrade in talent to go with 4 or 5 holdovers gets us to .500 in the league next year, that’s a giant leap.
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BYU was losing and on a trajectory to finish in the middle of the conference before Saunders was injured. But I agree he’s been absolutely vital to their success and stellar.
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Re 1998–I have always thought that if the games had been reversed–if we had played UK on sat and UNC on Monday, we would have won the tournament. We ran out of gas Monday night, partly b/c of Saturday and partly lack of depth. If we had played UK on Saturday, this would not have been as big an issue, and we could have kept our halftime lead and still had enough in the tank to beat the Heels on Monday.. Oh well.
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Agree.
Lest we get too discouraged about hoops, Saunders was pretty pumped about beating us in the Hunty because until this season as a SR, he’d never won here.
Also, we heard a lot of “we’re tired of the moral victories” remarks from the players. Moral victories don’t happen if you’re being annihilated… plenty of games we were at least competitive, until the end of the season.
The gap to being respectable is not as big as it seems, IMO.
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So many years later. It still makes me very happy to realize that I actually became personal friends with Chief Van Horn and kind of indirectly with Andre Miller because I knew them both from my sociology courses with them come and I’ve got to know Keith personally when I met him as a freshman in the Marriott library. Started talking about where he was from that I actually knew where diamond bar was. And then later on when his father died a shared with him my understanding about the sense of loss because my own father had been stolen away by my stepmother many years earlier.
I never did get to meet or or speak at any length with Michael doleac that I remember. But within the last 10 years I made contact with hanno mottola why is social media coming we struck up a definite friendly acquaintance because of my own experiences having visited Finland, understanding bits and pieces of the language and talking about things that we had in common. An amazing guy and I was so happy when he came back to be honored.
Contrast him to the arrogant entitled jackass that was bogut. I will never forgive the University for retiring his number just because he went number one in the draft. It’s inexcusable that you make a commitment we go to all the trouble of bringing you all the way from Australia, and then you bail halfway through your four-year commitment just because you’re going to make a lot of money. I realize I’m an older generation and my military background was heavily on my sense of honor and obligation, but I will never accept him as a legitimate number retiring. Never.
Yeah, before my time, sorry. But I was always mad that in the movie “Glory Road” it has a scene of UTEP’s Elite 8 game with Kansas and the championship game (of course) with Kentucky but completely ignores the Miners’ Final Four game with Utah. It would have been great to include the Utah game. After all, Chambers, an African American kid, was the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.
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I mean…they’re winning 25 games in mid major conferences. I’ll give the Aggies their flowers, but also, they get to the Tourney and do nothing.
They’ve won one NCAA tournament game in 25 years. As bad as we’ve been, we STILL have a better record in that time frame.
With that said, we HAVE TO get back on track. Our 10 year 0-fer even making the tournament is EXTREMELY embarrassing and unacceptable for a program at Utah’s level and with Utah’s resources.
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Wow.
I’m not even sure what to say here except, I TOTALLY disagree.
The fact that he basically carried us solo to the Sweet 16 and further honored the school by being a number one NBA draft pick…he’ll always be one of the Ute greats. And he would have been moronic to not enter the NBA when he did.
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Seven in a row and 10 out of 12. Incredible. Nothing close to that has been seen since, and I don’t suspect it ever will.
indeed was seven in a row (no wonder we hated them) Very few wins by any team in any sport have ever given me such joy as our win over them in Boise in 83.. All of us hated UCLA growing up (one lone person in our neighborhood group liked them because they grew up in Southern California before moving to Utah) We were all elated when NC State finally beat them to end their long run of tourney wins.
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Good points. That said, what are the traits or characteristics of a “program”. Who? What? And now…“How much?”. haha
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It’s hard to persuade donors to throw good money after bad. If the football team is raising more, that maybe why. When basketball has an actual program with promise, it will attract more money.
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