I skipped this as tired of being hit up for $.
What was the point of this meeting??
Sounds like the marketing people need to go. Rolling anti-family bump tunes??? Hell if I went to the game, I would’ve gotten my ■■■ thrown in jail for walking down to Harlan’s seats and confronting him for being so damned stupid as to let that ■■■■ happen.
Maybe we need a new AD. One that knows his customers. That ■■■■ might’ve flown in Florida…Utah, no bueno.
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I have faith in Craig Smith and believe/hope this might be a one step back, two step forward scenario. This loss seemed all about lacking toughness (rebounding and driving to the basket) and execution (turnovers)
My take on Harlan is that he could not care less about the majority of the fan base, but only caters to the big money types. To some degree I get that, but if you make the pricey experience miserable to 80%+ of your customers, I’ll cite the continuing cluster that is the RES concourse between quarters and at halftime as a prime example, it doesn’t take long for those customers to say they’ve had enough.
It’s kind of like Elon Musk…guy is brilliant, but clearly not brilliant in a lot of things.
We are sitting pretty good with coaches right now. The football experience needs a better flow between quarters and the half in the concourses for concessions - and those need to be more affordable. As always, the Pepsi contract is ridiculous, over promising and under delivering has been their SOP for decades.
Yes, a big part of his job is taking care of the well-heeled, but when your well-heeled are the same old six people (and they really are right now), you might want to spend some time growing that base instead of bleeding the basic fan and student body. Prospecting is a punishment for not getting referrals, but declaring the CC pond of big fish full is a disaster looking for a time and place to happen. It’s time to start prospecting and growing the pond for bigger fish.
A massive part of success filling seats (even at a commuter school) is marketing to the culture. What works in LA won’t work here. The truth is Whitt never rolled out to all these other schools, including TDS, because he liked the culture he had (and could build on) here. Honestly, it has put more butts in seat (and kept more butts in seats - even during the early PAC 12 days) than anything. #1 Culture item is Family. He built a football program around it. So did a lot of other programs on campus, including Women’s Gymnastics. Why in God’s green earth hasn’t Harlan just rubber-stamped successes onto MBB, WBB, and Baseball is anyone’s guess.
Do I believe Harlan is brilliant enough to make all that happen? No.
Do I believe Harlan is brilliant enough to find the really, really smart people who can manage a lot of these aspects and make a success? Maybe.
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I feel bad for the players and the coaches. I have no idea how it gets better. Smith appears to be a good guy and his time at USU suggests to me that he can identify talent, recruit it and coach it. Unfortunately, he has very little to sell to recruits.As much as many wanted Alex Jensen or Jonny Bryant, I don’t believe either would be having any more success.
It will be interesting to see how the team responds.
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That’s the crazy thing. Season ticket sales are sky high — and they aren’t being sold to big businesses. Very few options if you wanted season tickets today. People are buying the tickets and not showing up. Maybe a switch will be flipped for conference opponents.
Similar to football where even for high profile games, we see entire rows of empty seats in the expensive seats which are all sold in the middle sections, but north stands are packed.
But one problem I see out of curiosity I went to the utahutes site (not logging in as if I may be an interested new season ticket holder) and virtually nothing (a few random seats in the end zones are all that are available) which are rather pricey for what they are. If anything let someone new buy seats up in the rafters and open up the curtains again.
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There has been a huge turnover in Athletic Dept. since Harlan took over—maybe it was necessary or not?
NIL—Utah just can not compete with UCLA, Oregon, Washington—part of the problem is much of the new young tech money is in Utah County.
FB can recruit based on family & poly connections, but MBB you just need 2-3 high prized players.
AZ & USC & Oregon have a been paying to get them for years—now they can do it in the open.
Utah is not there & may never get there.
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How do you lose when you outshoot your opponent from the field, and from deep? You get killed on the boards (-10) and you turn the ball over (-5). That gave SHSU 16 extra possessions, and they took advantage.
You also shoot 50% from the FT line, and miss a couple of front ends. Utes left enough points on the FT line to win the game.
Rebounding and turnovers were bugaboos last season. This game does not give me confidence that these issues have been fixed. Utes had 14 assists and 16 turnovers. Ugh!
The SHSU players were built like linebackers, and were physically stronger than the Utes. I saw several instances where a Ute pulled down a rebound and one of the SHSU linebackers just reached in and tore the ball away.
The Utes aren’t very quick so the Ute guards struggled to stay in front of quicker SHSU guards. SHSU also had depth. 10 guys played 12+ minutes. That’s a long rotation.
Conclusion: The Utes look very vulnerable to teams like SHSU. Quick, deep, physically powerful teams that can keep their turnovers down.
Looks like Coach is taking the first steps towards tightening up the rotation. 8 played double digit minutes, and Exacte played 9 minutes. Of course things are subject to change, but for the moment it looks like Keita, Baxter, Holt and Brenchley are the odd men out.
My 2 cents.
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Unrelated except that it’s basketball.
I now have a reason to not like Baylor. Lohner is on Baylor’s team. Don’t know when that happened.
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Keita was hurt