Branden Carlson is a 7-footer who takes more than a third of his shots from behind the 3-point line, but that’s not really what makes him an anomaly in today’s high-major college basketball game.
It’s that Carlson is wearing the same jersey for the fifth season in a row
Utah. Utah. Utah. Utah.
And, now, Utah.
Nothing about the NIL-transfer portal era suggests Arizona should have to be dealing with Carlson and his sometimes confounding inside-outside ways again Thursday at the Huntsman Center. He should be, by today’s standards, elsewhere.
While players who slogged through the COVID-restricted season of 2020-21 can return to school for a fifth year of eligibility, they often do so at another school. Maybe even their third school.
Especially the ones who have all-league credentials or NBA potential as Carlson does. Those guys can simply take a step or two into the portal, and see what sort of potential NIL cash is out there.
Or, in a move that’s becoming even more common, they can enter the portal and the NBA Draft at the same time, imagining who knows how many possibilities.
Carlson kept it simple. He declared for the NBA Draft last March and said he did “contemplate pretty seriously” the idea of leaving but always figured returning to college would mean returning to the same college.
“It is definitely unique in this day and age for sure,” Carlson said Wednesday by telephone from Salt Lake City. “It seems more likely or not, you’re playing at a different school by now, especially in the fifth year. I definitely think it’s more a unique situation for me.”:
A local product who grew up just south of Salt Lake City, Carlson said he considered his loyalty to the Utes, his basketball development, the Utes’ upward trajectory and his personal life.
By late May, Carlson posted “legacy, that’s what’s on my mind,” in announcing his return. Already, he had stayed at Utah despite the coaching transition from Larry Krystkowiak to Craig Smith in 2021 — a move that prompted UA’s Pelle Larsson to move to Arizona — and now this.
“I am not surprised he came back,” Smith said last summer. “That guy is a Ute through and through.”
Ultimately, Carlson said, it was an easy decision.
“My wife goes to law school here as well,” Carlson said. “So there were a lot of factors that just made it an easy decision to come back. I think the team’s in a great position to have a successful year.”
Carlson is a big reason why. A second-team all-Pac-12 pick in 2021-22 and a first-team pick last season, Carlson is scoring at a comparable rate (16.1 points) to last season but has improved his efficiency from 3-point range (34.4) and increased his assists per game from 1.5 to 2.0 while the Utes have continued to build more options around him in Smith’s third season.
It’s to the point now where, Smith says, other teams can take him out and it doesn’t always affect the bottom line. Carlson has just five points on 2-for-10 shooting last Saturday against Colorado but the Utes still pulled out a crucial 73-68 win.(tncms-asset)8450e3de-9957-11ee-96e7-0bb3ca6b3353[2](/tncms-asset)
Carlson also had just nine points in Utah’s previous game, at Washington, but Smith was OK with that, too.
“The last two games the other team has just said `Nope, the other guys have got to beat” them, Smith said Wednesday, at his Salt Lake City news conference. “Both (Colorado and Washington) did a great job of every time we touched in the post they were double teaming him. But he’s a team guy. He’s gonna make the right play all the time. He has come a lot a long way as a playmaker that way.”
Smith said Carlson poses an especially tough decision when he steps out to set up a screen for a pick-and-roll.
“Are you going to guard him in the post?” Smith said. “Who are you going to put on him? A bigger guy, a smaller guy or in between? To his credit, there isn’t much he hasn’t seen.”
Arizona has a variety of options for that choice. The Wildcats appear likely to stick bouncy Keshad Johnson on Carlson, especially if the Utes choose to play either 7-footer Lawson Lovering or 230-pounder Keba Keita at center to tangle with Oumar Ballo.
The Wildcats could also throw a former Ute at Carlson in Larsson, too.
Either way, it could be tricky. Carlson hit only 1 of 6 3-pointers on Jan. 6 at McKale Center – but made 5 of 9 from long range while scoring 22 points in Utah’s 81-66 upset of Arizona at the Huntsman Center in early December last season.
Arizona has also lately demonstrated trouble guarding centers who can shoot 3s, guys like Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud (7 of 9 3-pointers over two games against Arizona) and Oregon State’s Michael Rataj (2 of 3 mostly wide open 3s in OSU’s Jan. 25 win over UA).
“He’s obviously a great 3-point shooter, he’s got good size and they put him in tough-to-guard situations,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said of Carlson. “So you’ve gotta have a plan, and one of the plans is you have to be great with your big recovering in those types of scenarios, which they don’t get a ton of experience doing.
“The other plan is, you’ve got to be willing to switch a few things here and there. We’ll have plans but he could play the four and they very well could play him at the five some, trying to kind of invert our defense a little bit.”
While Carlson is prompting all those headaches, and making Utah a tougher team to prepare for, he’s also helping himself improve his NBA chances with a by developing a more well-rounded skillset.
“It was a hard decision to come back” from the NBA draft pool, Carlson said. “With the feedback (received), I thought I have one more year to have to really develop my game and work on some things. So I thought it was a great opportunity to come back.”
To Utah. Nowhere else.
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