Players started yesterday with some testing. Hoops starts today!!
Thought we could use this for any workout/offseason rumors/reports.
154 days till college hoops starts! Go Utes!
With Mahorcic and Stefanovic the Utes have as many scholarship players from Belgrade, Serbia as from the State of Utah.
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“With Mahorcic and Stefanovic the Utes have as many scholarship players from Belgrade, Serbia as from the State of Utah.”
That’s Larry K’s legacy. utah’s new coach has a lot of fence mending to do. He has his work cut out for him. But I think he is the right guy for the job.
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I hope you’re correct in that Smith can get locals interested in the U again. Hopefully it means more talent generated in the state for BBall.
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That would be fine. But honestly, I don’t care where we get players, as long as we get some good ones and they stay here.
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Yeah, this matters much less in basketball than football. The state of Utah regularly places players into the nfl. Not true of Utah and the nba.
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Cool. Feel free to continue ignoring the local kids.
The Ute coaches are going after that guard at Farmingon High and that 5 star recruit at Wasatch Academy.
It seems like from the 70s through the 90s the state produced some really good college players but based on the number of high schools now, the talent level appears to have dropped.
Also: Is Mason Falslev still being offered a scholarship? I would imagine Smith was well aware of him, being from Cache Valley.
Mason is on his mission for at least another year. He’s a very good pick up for utah and from what I’ve heard he’s firm in his commitment.
That guard from Farmington is Colin Chandler. His family are hard core ute fans and he’s also got offers from Stanford, Creighton & BYU and a few other schools.
Danny Vranes was pretty good. He played in the NBA for a while.
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Vranes was the same class as Chambers.
Edit: But maybe I misunderstood your remark about nothing before the 80’s.
There are plenty of roster spots to fill. utah could do better than filling only 2 roster spots with local kids. I didn’t come on here to argue this and I’m sorry the discussion has devolved.
But has Smith offered him the same spot that Coach K offered?
Good question. Coach K retired. Larry K was fired BTW.
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You never ever never yield ground on instate players. And Utah won’t win championships because we’re loaded with NBA talent. You have a star powered difference maker, plus a couple of strong players surrounded by some role players. And then they stick around. A number of them should be Utahns.
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Utah Mr Basketball Awards (counting each season not each player since a few won more than once)
Huh. Utah has picked up more Mr Basketball winners over the last 20 year’s than I had realized.
Since 2001
BYU- 8 (9 if you count Jesse Wade)
Utah- 7
Utah State- 2
Weber State- 1
UVU- 1
DUKE- 1
Gonzaga- 1
UC Davis- 1
Interesting. Didn’t realize how FEW everyone other than BYU and Utah have in the state.
At the risk of getting dragged into a sub-thread started by a self-identified BYU fan, @Wingnut…
This speaks to three things:
- Lack of reliability/predictability of High School Player rankings.
- Recruiting
- Coaching
We had, during many of those years, (in which we had marginal at best coaching), highly touted recruits who made nothing of themselves at Utah, and in virtually all cases, later, made nothing of themselves at the schools to which they transferred.
I’m sure it we breakdown each individual, we’ll learn that failures in one of the three items above apply directly.
Oh, and, while you’re pointing out that Utah did not do all that well with all that talent, how much better did BYU do with the windfall?
I think we can both agree that utah underperformed in coaching up those good kids. I’m sure you all hope that your next coach will do a better job than your previous few coaches. And at the same time I think BYU did a better job of coaching up the kids that they had. I can point to BYU having a winning record against Utah during that 20 year time period. And you can point to Utah having higher highs then BYU during that same time period.
I was really just curious to see who had more Mr. Basketball award winners over the last 20 years and I was surprised to see the that utah had as many as they did. I think that really points to the fact that until recently I haven’t really paid much attention to utah basketball outside of the rivalry game.
After a quick scan of that list of names over the last 20 years I think there are only three kids who played any basketball after college. All three of them went to BYU. Please correct me if I made a mistake because I very well could be wrong on some of these kids.