Utah Basketball: Utes Beat Texas Tech 73-63

The Utes opened up their stay at the Puerto Rico Tip-off tournament with a 73-63 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders Thursday noon. The Utes were lead by Lorenzo Bonam, who score 20 points, pulled in 7 rebounds and 4 assists, in what has been Bonam's best game since joining the program. Jordan Loveridge also continued his hot start to the season by chipping in 18 points and 5 rebounds. Brandon Taylor pitched in 11 of his own, while Jakob Poeltl had maybe the most dominant 15 points and 9 rebounds that I can recall.

Poeltl was hamstrung with foul trouble much of the night, but in the 2nd half, his combination of a couple nice buckets, with some timely rebounding, and tipping balls his teammates, plus his free throws, yes I said free throws (7-of-9), made his contribution feel massive. Frankly, when I saw how few points he had, I was shocked.

As for Bonam, he said after the game that things were starting to slow down, and he's been figuring out the system more and more every game. He was arguably the most aggressive player offensively all game long, as he was constantly attacking the basket, both in transition as well as the half court game.

This was a solid win to get going in this tournament, but make no mistake, Texas Tech isn't a great team, especially offensively. At no point did it feel like they were going to put together a sustained offensive attack.

That will change tomorrow, as the Utah's will take on the other "U", the Miami Hurricanes.