I hate to be pessimistic, I really do. But this team isn’t making the NCAA tournament, especially if these injuries persist. This team can’t win on the road regardless. And what sucks, Utah loses a lot of its current contributors for next season and joins the toughest league in the country. It could be years before Utah gets back to the Big Dance, which is quite disheartening.
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Because of the covid year, only Brandon Carlson and Bajema are out of eligibility.
We do need to swap a couple for good players. Portal?
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Hopefully we can get a couple of really good players in the portal otherwise next year is going to be rough.
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Worster, D. Smith, Madsen, Keita, Lovering with kind of the same bench would’t be rough. Teat and Tarlac could continue improving. Exacte should be back.
But we do need some development, depth, improvement in some areas. I wonder if some of the seniors with a degree and one more year would return, want another experience elsewhere, or just be done or see if they could play Europe (or in Carlson’s case, see if he can get signed by a team or G league).
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I don’t see anything that tells me that Tarlac can play at this level. He gives effort, but is not serviceable.
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I honestly can’t recall seeing him do anything of note on the court. I’m sure he tries hard and is a good guy, but surely someone out there is better. Utah has a few decent recruits coming in, though some may be mission kids.
Don’t let this shock y’all too much, but the Tribune actually published a story about the injury aftermath of the WSU game. Given they haven’t had a reporter actually write about any Ute MBB game all month prior, this is progress.
When you think about having four of the Utes top players out, and that we probably would have been seeing a nine or ten man game rotation by now anyway, so four of the people we’re now having to lean on for quality minutes wouldn’t have been getting any meaningful minutes. That’s hard for any team to absorb. I think we’re at a point of just hoping who we’ve got available can get us through a couple of weeks moderately unscathed and that we can get Smith, Lovering, and Worster fairly healthy over the next month.
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True, but he has seemed to be wearing multiple hats of late.
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A couple comments/complaints about the rules:
1 - There are countless instances in games where a player receives the ball and takes a dribble to secure it a more fully, then holds the ball with two hands for a moment, they summarily starts dribbling again. Double dribble is almost never called.
2 - Years ago the end of game intentional foul was implemented. Among other things it was intended to allow for more end of game flow. The team that is fouled is supposed to get a free throw AND the ball out of bounds. Countless end of game intentional fouls are committed without one being called, a player on the team that is behind reaches out a grabs an offensive player. No intentional foul. And on and on it goes. A root canal passes more effectively than the end of many basketball games.