Utah Utes Basketball- Stats of the Ones Who Got Away

After yesterday’s moment of sunshine and joy, its time to return to the darkness of Utah Basketball.  One of the questions that people ask is what is going on with all the players who would have been Utes over these past two season.  People hear rumors here or there but I thought it would have been worthwhile to put it all in one place.  So here is how some former Utes are doing.

Player                  School                 PPG      RPG       APG        FG%      3P%
Will Clyburn      Iowa St.               14.8        7.2         2.3         .454        .311
Shaun Glover    Oral Roberts       14.1        5.4         2.0         .479       .258
J.J. O’Brien       SDSU                     6.7        4.4        1.5         .538       .000
Chris Hines       Drake                     9.1        2.2        1.2         .394       .379
Josh Sharp       BYU                        5.1        4.5        0.7         .576       .333
Dom Lee           Casper College    13.1        7.0        1.6
N. Djurisic         Georgia                 7.7         3.8        1.4         .374      .280
M. Henderson   Ole Miss             19.9         3.4        1.7         .385      .363
Jiggy Watkins    Utah                   15.6         3.3        4.8         .391      .214
Preston Guiot   SW Baptist          12.5          2.4       5.4           .364     .354

Now to complete the picture, Will and Jiggy would have been gone this year but you can see what might have been with that team, if we could have seen them play. Also I include Marshall Henderson just to show why Utah took a chance on the kid. A little different attitude and he’s a super star. Third I include Nemanja Djurisic at Georgia because he would have been a Ute if Boylen stayed. And in addition to this, Utah would have had Jason Washburn and Jeremy Olsen to add to the returning team. Also Dom Lee is having a solid season at Casper College being ranked in the top 3 in 5 statistical categories. Finally George Matthews who never really got a chance would have been on the team.

It really seems clear now, if Boylen and that team or even that team had been brought back, they just might have won a down Pac-12. Remember Clyburn’s stats were higher at Utah 17 PPG and 9 RPG.  And the team after that, even with the loss of Clyburn and Jiggy would have been a very solid team without counting any recruits we might have brought in.

So the next time someone involved with the Utah Program says we have to have a long rebuild and stay the course, isn’t it worth looking at what we had and what those players are doing now and say, just maybe we had already rebuild.

One other point made in the comments.  All of the guys that Larry brought in and then dumped after one season aren’t performing nearly as well as anyone on this list.  Why was he in such a hurry to dump the marginal guys when he didn’t have better players available?