Player Efficiency +/- Delon Wright 17 -3.8 Brandon Taylor 13 +0.2 Jakob Poeltl 11 -2.8 Brekkott Chapman 8 +0.8 Dallin Bachnski 7 +1.6 Dakarai Tucker 6 -1.2 Chris Reyes 5 -1.9 Kyle Kuzma 1 -2.7 Isaiah Wright 1 -1.7 Jordan Loveridge -2 -11.5 Kenneth Ogbe -2 -6.4 Jake Connor DNP Austin Eastman DNP Jeremy Olsen DNP Eris Winder DNP
Jordan Loverdige, I'm not putting all the blame on you for this game but you sure didn't help your case. Three missed shot from point blank? Why can't Jordan dribble in traffic? Does he dribble too high? It looks to me like he just dribbles blindly into a crowd sometimes. Nevertheless the entire team didn't play well. UCLA looked amped. UCLA looked prepared. The 1-2-2 defense confused Delon, that's not good. Corner threes beat a 1-2-2. Utah got back into this game when they started looking for the corner three. Plus they didn't run the baseline. The 2 guard is key in beating a 1-2-2 and when Taylor and Tucker finally realized that they did some damage...but it was too late.
The bad...three players had a better game from the first match in Utah (Bach +3, Chapman +1, Kuzma +1) 7 players had worse games. As for UCLA they only had 2 players play worse and 6 players posted better efficiency scores from game 1 (Alford +21, Hamilton +15, Powell +13, Looney +6, Allen +6, Welsh +2). Bottom line UCLA wanted that game much more than Utah did. Utah allowed a season high in assists (15), committed turnovers (6), Fouls (11) and 2nd highest in Efficiency (82, Arizona 83), Points (69, Ball St 72), free throws made (18, Kansas 21) and field goal % (46.2% Arizona 49.1% ). Utah had season lows in free throws made (6), attempted (9) and steals (2). Overall Utah played a lazy game. Utah has allowed over 42% from the field in the past 4 games. Safe to say Poeltl being hurt doesn't help.
The good...Utah did hold UCLA to only 1 block (third time this season) Utah was +5 on blocks and UCLA only shot 23.1% from deep 3/13. Utah did attempt 22 threes which is over their average of 18.6 but a lot of that was due to being down most of the game. That's about the only good that came from this game.
Bring on the Trojans.