This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Larry Krystkowiak has preached about defense since he arrived in Salt Lake City. Finally Saturday, he was able to praise it.
Utah put together what the coach and his players generally referred to as their best defensive effort of the season in a 64-43 win over Arizona State.
The Utes held the Sun Devils to 38.6 percent shooting, recorded seven steals and scored 14 points off turnovers.
"A funny thing happened," Krystkowiak said, "when we did a really good job of defending them and taking away some of their options, the rim became about three times bigger than it has recently for us, and the shots were going in."
If strong defense leads to better offense, as Krystkowiak says, then Saturday seemed to be a good example. The Utes had one of their best shooting games of the season, shooting better than 50 percent both on 3-pointers and overall.
"That's where we started, on the defensive end," junior center Jason Washburn said. "I think it was probably our most complete game on the defensive end. We just came down and guys made plays. The easy part was putting the ball in the basket. It was a good team effort tonight by everybody."
The Sun Devils went long stretches without scoring: nearly five minutes at the start of the game and eight minutes in the second half.
Of course, it helped that the Utes went into the game with a strong grasp of what Arizona State would be doing.
"A lot of their plays are things that we have in our playbook," Krystkowiak said, "that we started the season with, and we junked some of it because it wasn't working out so well."
It didn't work out so well for ASU either.
"Defensively we're pretty darn good," Krystkowiak said. "I like what we're doing defensively."
Twitter: @oramb