Post Arizona Thoughts…

So I got to see the Ute hoopsters up close and personal today against Arizona.  And it was a heck of a game.  If you’ve never been The McKale Center is a great place to watch a game.  Great classy fans who are really into the game and an all around wonderful experience.

I think I have a new perspective about Utah Basketball or at least altered.

Essentially I’m not going to let the idiots of our fan base ruin my enjoyment anymore.  For whatever reason they feel the need to tear down the last guy and make a ton of excuses for Larry.  I’ve made my case about a lot of things, I was right about all most all of it and the lies continue.  I’ll point them out from time to time but I’m going to stop being pissed about it.  Idiots are idiots and they’re not going to stop.

Why not let Larry stand on what he’s done.  Yeah he deserves credit for what happened today at Arizona.  But he deserves as much and probably more criticism for the pile of crap he laid at ASU.

He doesn’t get to have it both ways, that all good things are because of him and all bad are because of Jim Boylen.

All that being said, this is the strangest basketball team I’ve ever seen.  It’s not just that they’re so bad but they play so strangely.  It’s almost as if what other teams do to us has nothing to do with what happens.  We hit shots, we don’t hit shots and why it is or isn’t happening at any given moment is almost inexplicable.

But I think I’ve found the great red flag with Larry.  He’s all yelling, all negative all the time.  It’s fine when shots are dropping and he’s mostly off peoples’ backs.  But when things turn south, he freaks out.  When the team needs to be calmed down and brought back together, they get a lot of screaming.  And for stretches of the game, they look like deer-in-headlights.

Utah fans have this myth of Rick Majerus that he was always an asshole all the time, and he was a great deal.  But in-game he knew how to stop runs and how to teach.  If fact, the games where you could see Rick really lose his shit, you could see a loss coming.

That brings us back to Larry.  That style only works for so long.  Rick took us to a final four for God Sakes and a great many people were ready to say goodbye just a couple of years later.  And no matter how impressive that win over Nevada was five years ago, I’m comfortable saying that Larry isn’t Rick and that unless he can find another trick for that pony, it will all wear thin much sooner.

Even with the people claiming they love it now.

So it will be interesting to see if Larry treats next years group different?

From now on Larry is judged on what he has done, from choosing to dump a kid like Shawn Glover without having someone better than him to come in and for efforts good like Arizona and bad like USC and Arizona St.