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Las Vegas
As of late Friday night, Selection Sunday hardly was the Utah Utes' biggest concern.
The Utes came to the Pac-12 basketball tournament intending to do what they never had done, by at least playing in the championship game. Instead, they have to live with a semifinal loss to Oregon, personally delivered by the conference's Player of the Year. Joseph Young's 30-foot shot in the last second gave the Ducks a 67-64 victory.
Down the hall from the Utes in the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Young was reveling in the moment, describing how he asked for the ball and basically designed his own play. Concluding his account of the shot, he said, "And that's all she wrote."
The Utes know the story of their season is yet to be written in the NCAA tournament, but they wanted to do more in Las Vegas. The subdued locker-room scene said everything, with players sitting in their uniforms during the media availability period — unlike the regular-season practice of having selected players appear at a news conference.
"It hurts," Ute guard Brandon Taylor said. "I'd be lying to you if it didn't. It hurts, because I'm not thinking that the NCAA tournament is next week. As a goal for the team, we wanted to get to the championship."
We'll never know how beating Oregon — or, conceivably, Arizona in the title game — would have affected Utah's Selection Sunday seeding. As it stands, the Utes can't reasonably expect any better than a No. 5 seed. They were the Pac-12's third-best team in February and March, so being placed among the top 20 contestants is all they can ask.
The reality is that seeding is overrated, anyway. The Sweet 16 has been my line of judgment for this team all season, and the odds of getting there from a No. 5 seed are almost as good as from a No. 3 slot. In the round of 32 over the past 30 years, No. 3 seeds have beaten No. 6 seeds 54 percent of the time; No. 5 seeds have defeated No. 4 teams in 44 percent of the matchups.
What could work against Utah is the NCAA committee's giving top-four seeds some favorable geography. The Utes may have cost themselves an assignment to Portland or Seattle, and they could meet a team that's playing close to home in the round of 32.
Yet some historical comparisons should be reassuring to the Utes, from different angles. In 2005, Utah reached the Sweet 16 as a No. 6 seed, behind Andrew Bogut. And if the current team is seeded No. 5, it will be much better equipped to perform at the NCAA level than the '09 team of Luke Nevill that won the Mountain West tournament and was generously seeded No. 5, only to lose badly to Arizona.
Just winning an NCAA game for the first time in 10 years would be a breakthrough for the Utes. Anything short of the Sweet 16 would be a letdown, though, considering the national profile they developed with Wooden Award finalist Delon Wright and the expectations that accompanied their high ranking.
In the round of 32 — if not sooner — the Utes must solve the inconsistency and breakdowns that have hurt them in close games lately. Jordan Loveridge went from a 7-of-10 shooting night against Stanford in the quarterfinals to 0 for 7 vs. Oregon, and Utah's 11 first-half turnovers were costly.
Defensively, the Utes let Young get going in the second half with some lapses, as he scored 18 of his 25 points. Some favorable calls enabled Utah to tie the game in the last minute, but Young avoided Utah's double-team scheme by shooting before Wright and Jakob Poeltl could converge on him.
The Utes' remarkable ability to blow out most Pac-12 opponents at home may have hurt them, once the games got tighter. "We try to do some of those things in practice, but you can't really simulate it until you get into live action," said coach Larry Krystkowiak.
In advance of the semifinals, Krystkowiak had described Young as "kind of the head of the snake" for Oregon.
And then he bit the Utes, in the end.
Twitter: @tribkurt