Despite an abundance of fresh faces sporting Utah uniforms this season, returning players carried the bulk of the load in just about every aspect of the team’s lone exhibition game on Wednesday night.
The Utes routed Montana Tech, 95-45, in an exhibition game in front of an announced 9,097 in the Jon M. Huntsman Center. Four Utes scored 10 points or more led by senior forward David Collette (15 points, seven rebounds) and junior guard Sedrick Barefield (15 points, eight assists). Barefield played 21 minutes, while Collette logged 17 minutes.
Senior forward Tyler Rawson, who started alongside Collette in the frontcourt, scored 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting and also pulled down five rebounds. Senior wing Gabe Bealer also chipped in with 10 points and five rebounds. Freshman forward Donnie Tillman scored seven points and grabbed eight rebounds off the bench.
“It’s a good starting point for us,” Utes coach Larry Krystkowiak said. “I thought we played pretty hard overall. We had 10 turnovers, which was a goal — to try to get shots. I thought the energy was there. We had a bunch of guys that produced. Everybody that played scored, other than [Christian Poopla] I guess. Pop got put in late and didn’t score but made a nice pass.
“It’s good. It’s a marathon and this was our first one where people are in the building.”
A 15-2 run gave the Utes a 29-11 lead with 9:10 left in the first half after Rawson sank a free throw to complete an old-fashioned three-point play. The Utes’ lead eclipsed the 20-point benchmark on Jake Connor’s 3-pointer that made it 34-13.
Barefield pushed the lead to 30 points with a pull-up 3-pointer with the shot clock expiring with 1:15 remaining in the first half. Barefield’s trey made the score 47-17, and it marked the fourth 3-pointer of the half for the Utes. The Utes started off shooting 1-for-8 from 3-point range, and they went into halftime having gone 4-of-14 from long range.
Barefield, who went 5-for-10 from the floor before halftime, scored all 15 of his points in the first half, including the final seven points of the half. He also dished out five assists.
The Utes scored 24 first-half points off of 14 Orediggers’ turnovers to take a 51-17 advantage into halftime. The Utes shot 53 percent in the opening frame.
After making just four 3-pointers in the first half, the Utes went 3-for-4 from long range in the first three and a half minutes of the second half. The Utes’ lead stretched to as many as 53 points.
The Orediggers shot 36 percent and went just 5-of-16 from behind the 3-point line.
“I think we did pretty well executing, and everyone did pretty well playing together,” Collette said. “There’s obviously some things that we’re going to look at and we need to fix, but overall it was a pretty good showing.”
Briefly
The Utes wore black T-shirts during warmups with the words “R.I.P Chen Wei Guo” on the back, and they held a moment of silence prior to the game. Guo, a 23-year-old Utah student, was shot and killed in an apparent carjacking attempt on Monday night. The shooting and following manhunt forced the campus into lockdown for several hours Monday night.