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Boulder, Colo. • Between Lorenzo Bonam and the rim: 6-foot-10 Josh Scott.
No sweat.
The junior point guard had made similar shots in practice, but this was the real deal: His high-arcing shot over Scott bounced around on the rim — "it seemed to hang there forever," his coach said — and rolled in with 1.1 seconds left.
"I thought it was money the whole way," Bonam said.
A last-second hurl from Colorado hit the rim but was no good. And Utah's 56-54 win at Coors Events Center, the team's first Pac-12 victory this year, was accompanied by the most beautiful sound a road team can hear: a sudden hush by the crowd of 8,701.
"I feel like that's the best feeling, sucking the air out of a crowd," sophomore forward Kyle Kuzma said. "At one point they were on their feet. It was loud in there. Making a big shot and shutting them up — it's priceless, really."
It's similarly difficult to put a value on the win, which Utah (12-4, 1-2) sorely needed following an 0-2 start in the conference. It was physical, hard-nosed and everything the team expected it to be, and they faced uncertainty trailing by 7 with just under five minutes to go. But an 11-2 run to the final buzzer sealed up the Utes' fourth straight win over Colorado (12-4, 1-2), and second straight in Boulder.
Utah finished a week of questions about its grit — and much discussion about a certain canceled game next season — with a feel-good win that gives the program momentum heading into a homestand next week.
The Utes owe the win to Bonam in more ways than one: Leading the team with 17 points for the game, he got a key steal with 24 seconds left on an ill-advised baseline pass from Josh Fortune. After bringing the ball up the court and calling timeout, the Utes huddled together for one last good look at the basket, which hasn't always gone well this season.
Coach Larry Krystkowiak said he had spent an hour and a half earlier in the day drawing up game-ending plays and discussing them with his staff. With 13 seconds left, the Utes in-bounded the ball to Bonam who drove to his left for his seventh and final basket of the game — a shot his teammates says he makes often going against the likes of 7-foot Jakob Poeltl.
"We ended up going with one I thought about, and it was great," Krystkowiak said. "Lorenzo really got a knack to getting there. He made a big-time play for us."
For most of the night, Utah struggled to find offensive plays — particularly with leading scorer Poeltl strung up by not getting any room to breathe in the post as Scott played strong defense. Poeltl finished the game with only 6 points, matching a season low, and was 2 for 8 shooting. The team shot only 39 percent itself in the second half, and trailed by as much as nine points late in the game.
What kept Utah in it was strong defense on its own part: Utah held Colorado to 38 percent shooting (including 27 percent in the first half) and didn't give much away in the paint against one of the conference's best big men in Scott.
Down the stretch, Colorado missed four of its final five shots against Utah's D — the last turnover sealing it up.
Utah's late-game execution was called into question last week after giving away a game at Stanford. With a win in a historically tough place to play for the program, the Utes hope it begins a turnaround into the rest of the season.
"We were real resilient today," Kuzma said. "We were down 7. We could've thrown this out like past games. We came back and fought, kept at it, kept at it — it worked out for us."
Twitter: @kylegoon —
Storylines
R Lorenzo Bonam hits the game-winning layup with 1.1 seconds left.
• The Utes come back from a 52-45 deficit with five minutes left.
• The Utah defense holds Colorado to two points in final 5:25, and 38 percent shooting.
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