Seen and heard in Salt Lake City: On 'hot and sweaty' Valentine's Day cards, bad birthdays
- Bruce Pascoe Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Bruce Pascoe checks in with the sights and sounds from Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City, where Utah handed the Arizona Wildcats their sixth straight loss Thursday night, 83-76.
Valentineβs babies
UpdatedArizona graduate guard Justin Coleman and play-by-play broadcaster Brian Jeffries both celebrated birthdays in Salt Lake City on Thursday.
βBlessed to see 23,β Coleman posted on Twitter.
UA equipment manager Brian Brigger honored Coleman on Twitter. Brigger typically posts a βgame dayβ tweet featuring a jersey number or combination of jersey numbers that have some sort of meaning. So on Thursday, he simply put out a photo of Colemanβs No. 12 jersey.
Valentine βloveβ
UpdatedUtah students had a little fun with Arizona coach Sean Miller on Thursday, with two of them waving βValentineβ cards with photos of the UA coach.
One read "You make me hot and sweatyβ next to the infamous photo of Miller sweating through a white dress shirt in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament. Pink hearts were pasted above each of Millerβs shoulders.
Another was no surprise. It read: βI would open you up for investigation.β
ESPN valentines
UpdatedI love...... pic.twitter.com/crXp02qblq
— Bill Walton (@BillWalton) February 15, 2019
In a way ESPN got in on the Valentineβs Day theme Thursday, too: It paired its famously yinΒ andΒ yang broadcasting duo of Dave Pasch and Bill Walton to work the Utah-Arizona game for ESPNU on Valentineβs night.
βItβs just the way it was scheduled,β Pasch said with a smile.
The two broadcasting partners actually had a little fun earlier in the day, too, with Pasch curling around Waltonβs outstretched arms to roll in a 10-footer off the glass while attending team shootarounds atΒ Β Huntsman Center.
βThatβs all you need,β a smiling Walton said. βThatβs good.β
Pasch posted the video on Twitter, saying βif you want to see a @hoophall legend get taken to school, check (Arizona at Utah) tonight on ESPNU. Or simply watch this video.β
Maybe they were busy
UpdatedFans waving glow sticks except thereβs not a lot of them. Fans, that is. pic.twitter.com/1ORsFtGQeU
— Bruce Pascoe (@BrucePascoe) February 15, 2019
However, maybe Valentineβs Day gave Utes fans something else to do Thursday besides watch basketball. Despite improving weather and clear roads after a snowstorm earlier in the week, the 15,000-seat Huntsman Center appeared less than half full.
Over 14 previous home games, Utah averaged 10,729 fans, second in the Pac-12 only to Arizona.
High expectations
UpdatedThen again, maybe some of the fansβ absence had something to do with expectations that arenβt quite being met.
Although Utah has exceeded or been tied with its preseason prediction in the Pac-12 preseason media poll every year since 2011-12 β and are on pace this season to do so againΒ , after being picked eighth β Deseret News columnist Brad Rock wrote this week that βUte fan expectations are an entirely different matter.β
Coach Larry Krystkowiak has the nationβs eighth-highest salary among college basketball coaches, $3.39 million, according to USA Today. In a column entitled, βKrystkowiakβs cliff act not a fireable offense,β Rock wrote that βRabid fans say Utah is underperforming, and based on Krystkoβs princely salary, itβs true.β
But Rock also said Krystkowiak has done well with the recruits he has been able to land, and that his teams have finished respectably in the standings.
βThe Pac-12 had more players (69) on opening-day NBA rosters this year than any other conference except the ACC (82), and more than twice that of the highly rated Big East (31),β Rock wrote. βYet the Utes consistently finish in the top third of the league standings.β
Harlanβs homecoming of sorts
UpdatedHaving started his athletics career as a graduate assistant for Dick Tomeyβs Arizona football teams in the mid-1990s, Mark Harlan took in his first home game between Arizona and Utah as the Utesβ athletic director.
Harlan worked at UA in a variety of roles early in his career, while also stopping at San Jose State and Northern Colorado, and then left Arizona to become UCLAβs senior associate AD for external relations in 2010.
From there, Harlan served as South Floridaβs AD from 2014 until he was hired in the same role at Utah in June 2018.
After all that traveling, Harlan said it still felt βsurrealβ to be facing an Arizona team.
βItβs a special place,β Harlan said of UA. βThereβs a lot of special people there.β
Red eye
UpdatedEvenΒ though the Wildcats wonβt play Colorado until Sunday, they were scheduled to take a charter flight to the Denver area immediately after Thursdayβs game.
Ryan Reynolds, UAβs director of basketball operations, said the decision to move quickly came about because the school was paying charter operator Sun Country to have the plane that took them from Tucson to Salt Lake City on Wednesday sit around before the flight to Denver.
The good news for the Wildcats is that their flight, for a change, could actually land at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, in Broomfield, just 13 miles from their Boulder hotel.
The big number
Updated7
3-pointers from Utahβs Parker Van Dyke on 10 attempts, after Van Dyke hit a buzzer-beating 25-footer to beat UCLA on Saturday.
Tags
More information
- Photos: Utah 83, Arizona Wildcats 76, Pac-12 men's college basketball
- Arizona Wildcats can't stop Utah's shooting star in sixth straight loss
- Greg Hansen: Parker Van Dyke hits 3 after 3, extending UA's once-unthinkable losing streak
- The Wildcast, Episode 173: Why can't Arizona snap streak in weak Pac-12?
- Midwestern toughness sets Arizona Wildcats trio apart
- College basketball scoreboard: Arizona at Utah
- Wildcats hit Rocky Mountain schools looking to continue Pac-12's strangest trend
- Arizona Wildcats lose sixth straight game, 83-76 at Utah
- Tucson firefighters rescue man after car gets stuck in wash
- Sean Miller says Brandon Williams 'further along' toward possible return to Arizona Wildcats
- Tucson police arrest suspect in armed robbery of east-side bank last May
- Tucson woman charged with fatally stabbing brother
- As season goes south, Arizona Wildcats' Alex Barcello shows his grit
- Sean Miller: 'It just takes that one game' for Arizona to climb out of rut
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