Utah Utes Basketball- This Season Compared to Giacolletti’s Final Season

I see more than a few people running around saying they are quite pleased with what has gone on in this season of Utah Utes Basketball.  So I thought I’d offer something up.

Before Larry and Dr. Hill thought blowing up a team returning everyone was like the best idea ever, the gold standard for bad seasons was Ray Giacolletti’s final season.  The Utes were 11-19, 6-10 in conference.  And all kinds of stories have emerged as to how bad things were and how Giac quit on the team and the team quit and so on.  A couple of more facts that will become important in a moment, Utah’s final RPI that season was 132 and all 11 of their wins were D-1 wins.

Currently Utah stands at 11-16, 3-12 in the Pac-12.  Only 9 of those wins are D-1 wins.  And our RPI sits at 182.

The Utes currently have three regular season games and at least one in the tourney.  So this team has a theoretical chance of being better than the supposed abomination of the final Ray Giacolletti season.  I’ll say I’d be shocked if it happened.

Further, people are going to point to a series of close games to show that things are really quite good.  Here is one last nugget of information.  That Giacolletti team had 9 losses within 6 points and 3 more within 10.

So I ask the question, how are we proud of a season that loses a comparison to a team and a coach that are reviled by Utah fans?

Utah faces the Stanford Cardinal today.  We did beat Stanford last year but were routed in our first matchup this season.