Three games in four days in an arena in a tropical location: In college basketball this is a surefire recipe for testing the mettle of your team early in the season. For Utah, which just wrapped up a weekend in Puerto Rico with a 2-1 record and a third-place finish, there was a major wake-up call in a 24-point blowout loss to Miami sandwiched in between two less-than-stellar performances. Still, this weekend will serve Larry Krystkowiak‘s team well as it can focus on several key areas that need to improve. Below, we look at three of those areas.

It was that type of struggle for Jakob Poeltl and Utah this past week. (The Salt Lake Tribune)

1. Keep Jakob Poeltl Involved – In case you hadn’t heard, the sophomore seven-foot Austrian is a serious player. Long, athletic, mobile and skilled, with a variety of moves in his arsenal, there are very few players in the country who can handle him in the post one-on-one. And even when the Utes run into one (such as Miami center Tonye Jekiri), Poeltl is capable of affecting the game in so many ways that it is imperative that the Utes keep him involved. In that Miami game, Poeltl picked up two early fouls and never got consistently on track in 25 minutes of action. Keeping Poeltl away from foul trouble while still maintaining his aggressiveness on both ends of the floor is a priority. But the other thing the Utes need to work on is feeding the ball to Poeltl as often as possible. Against Temple on Sunday, the Owls had no one who could pose much of a threat to him inside, and he went for 32 points on 12 field goal attempts as a result. Still, there were stretches where the Utah offense would neglect to find its big man for several possessions in a row. And even when they did look to him, the post entry passes thrown were often difficult to receive, such as in this example here. But, to Poeltl’s credit, he was able to catch that pass (and many others) and convert. The Utah offense needs to work on post entry passes for the rest of the season.
2. Get Lorenzo Bonam More Involved – The Utes have a lot of talent on this team, maybe even too much – 10 guys played on Sunday and Brekkot Chapman only received five minutes. But while there are a bunch of high quality players on this team, there may be only one guy who can consistently create off the bounce for himself – Lorenzo Bonam. Now, being able to create off the dribble isn’t the great solution of offensive basketball, but when things break down at the end of the shot-clock, a guy who can break down his defender, get separation and find a clean shot is a necessity. Bonam, a JuCo transfer with just five games of D-I basketball experience, is still finding his footing. But on multiple occasions in Puerto Rico, he showed his ability to do just that as well as live up to all the other requirements (defense, good decisions, knocking in a jumper when needed) of a high-use perimeter player.
   

   Larry Krystkowiak and Utah return home with plenty upon which to improve. (USA TODAY Sports)

3. Figure Out The Backup Center Spot – The Utes have Poeltl, tiny Brandon Taylor and a plethora of guys in seemingly the same body – 6’5” to 6’7”, long and skinny. What they don’t have is a clear answer as to what to do with the minutes when Poeltl is out of the game. When he picked up two early fouls on Friday, it was 6’7” junior Chris Reyes who came in for relief. And that’s great because Reyes is a terrific player searching for a role on this team, but he’s not a center. And neither is anybody else on this roster. The score was at 16-10 Miami when Poeltl left the game. By the time he returned, the Utes’ deficit had more than doubled. Utah can’t just give away minutes like that. If Reyes can bruise and grind his way to effective spot duty off the pine at the five, that works; but even the power forwards on this team (Kyle Kuzma and Brekkot Chapman appear to be the only guys who can claim that spot, outside of Reyes) are willowy and more inclined to life at the perimeter. Since there is no clear answer here, there is going to need to be an adjustment of focus when Poeltl is off the floor between these three and a dedication to playing bigger, protecting the paint and cleaning the glass.

AMurawa (999 Posts)

Andrew Murawa Likes Basketball.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2015 at 5:47 pm by Andrew Murawa and is filed under microsites, pac 12. Tagged: brekkot chapman, chris reyes, feature, jakob poeltl, kyle kuzma, lorenzo bonam, utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.