Utes fall to San Diego State 80-52

For a young team coming off of an emotional win, it’s not too big of a surprise to see them struggle in the next game against a ranked San Diego State team, who is undefeated on the season, and is a typical SDSU team.

The Utes really struggled to find any consistency, especially on the offensive side fo the ball on Saturday, as they went multiple 5+ minute droughts without being able to convert. Utah found themselves down double-digits almost right away, as they struggled from time to find consistent offense, and just didn’t really have the juice to keep up with the Aztecs. They did make a nice run before halftime, a 6-0 run, to pull the game to within 30-19.

Utah did come out of the second half with a bit of juice, as it looked like they may rally, as they trimmed the SDSU lead to 8, at just 33-25, and had a chance to pull closer, but Timmy Allen couldn’t convert a layup. After that, some threes by SDSU, and the route was on from there. The Utes just couldn’t recover as the Aztecs built the lead to 17, then 20, and so on until the game was truly out of reach.

Timmy Allen finished with a team-high 21 points and six rebounds on 3-of-5 from deep. Both Gach was the next closest in the scoring column with eight points and four boards on just 2-of-9 shooting. Utah shot 31% on the game, and was bit with the turnover bug, giving it away 17 times. Against a team like SDSU, that will kill you, and it did. Utah’s defense wasn’t great, especially in the second half, but they gave up almost 50% shooting for the game for SDSU, 55% in that second half.

Now the Utes will have over a week off, as they will return to action January 2nd against Oregon State to open Pac-12 play at the Huntsman Center, as they’ll host the Oregon schools. This will be a good break to allow the team to recoup, get some more practices in, and to prepare for the grind of a much improved conference this season.