The effort was good last night. The defense and rebounding looked really good--how much of that was because of the opponent and how much of it was Utah being improved in those aspects? It won't take too long to find out I think.

Shooting was not good at all and it didn't really strike me as a bunch of great looks that went halfway down and came out. In other words, I don't have high hopes that it was an anomaly.

I was dismayed to see the rotation--not because I don't think Larry played the right guys, I really don't know--but because the first eight were scholarship players (five FR and three SO) and then walkons were getting minutes ahead of the three remaining scholarship players. Way too early, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope for the long-term viability of Al Plummer as a player on this roster. Lahat has plenty of upside but I thought he'd be a little further along in his development than he appears right now. I actually thought Wenzel did a lot of nice things and could carve out a decent role--especially if his shooting lives up to billing--but there has to be some reason that he is behind a couple of walkons in the rotation already.

As for good things, I liked Carlson--we'll have to see how he looks against guys his size but he'll be good as an upperclassman (hopefully at Utah). Jantunen is a keeper, I hope we can keep him around for a while. I like having Timmy Allen as a go-to scorer who shows a knack for getting to the line--it won't always be as easy as last night, but from what we saw last year he just knows how to attack the hoop and draw fouls and I think we'll see plenty of that as his usage increases this year. Seeing man-to-man defense just feels right, I hope we don't fall back into being a predominantly zone team again.