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Seattle • Devon Daniels started the season just 2 for 10 from behind the 3-point line, and the Utah coaching staff was fine with the freshman not gunning it from outside.
But lately, it's been tough to hold him back: Daniels is 9 for 12 in his last five games, including 3 for 3 on Saturday night.
The 6-foot-5 slasher has a shooting stroke.
"I've been in the lab working on it, man," he said. "If you leave me open, it's going up."
The problem for opponents lately has been a lot of Utes (14-5, 5-2) seem to have been in the lab, helping the team distill one of the best offenses in the country — one that was fully unleashed in a 94-72 win over Washington over the weekend.
This isn't the team that withered against Butler and Xavier in the nonconference schedule. Between beating the Huskies and Washington State over the weekend, the Utes piled up 96 points in the paint without David Collette, one of the surest low-post scoring options in the league.
In the two-game road sweep, Utah made 72 baskets — 34 were dunks or layups. For the week, the Utes shot 59 percent.
While the Cougars and Huskies are not the bastions of defense in the conference, consider that the Utes have scored 80 or more points in five straight games — something the program hadn't done since 1993 in a stretch that included Cal-Irvine and Chicago State. Utah's own five-game stretch has seen them shoot 54 percent or better in each contest while winning three league games on the road, beating a then-ranked team (USC) and pushing a top-5 team (UCLA) to the limit.
"Right now guys are stepping up and making some shots," coach Larry Krystkowiak said. "It wasn't always that way in the preseason. And part of that I think is the newness of offense and trying to find your places and your niches."
How good is Utah's offense? Only three teams in America are shooting better from the field right now.
Utah's field goal mark of 51.7 percent includes a 59-percent mark on 2-point shots against DI competition, second-best in the country according to stat site KenPom.com. And it isn't as if Utah's weak non-conference schedule is artificially boosting those numbers: The team actually leads the league in conference-only shooting, hitting 54.1 percent of shots since Pac-12 play began. No other team — not UCLA, not Oregon, not Arizona — is shooting over 50.2 percent.
Collette's addition has been a big piece of that: While averaging 14.9 points, he's shot a team-leading 63.6 percent. But Saturday's game without him (concussion protocol) showcased senior Lorenzo Bonam and Daniels in particular.
In a conference of brilliant freshmen, Daniels has staked his claim as one of them while averaging 11.5 ppg, shooting 60.7 percent and playing tough defense. As a driver, Krystkowiak said, Daniels doesn't favor either hand significantly more than the other: He can beat players off the dribble from either side. And now he can pull up, too.
"He's becoming quite a weapon. It's going to be hard to guard him on the perimeter when he's got his ability to beat people off the bounce. It's a nice little combination."
The same can be said for Bonam, who started the season off the mark. The senior captain is surging, averaging nearly 19 points per game in his last four while shooting 73 percent from the floor. Both Bonam and Daniels are among the top 20 nationally in effective field goal percentage — the only other team with two players in that range is UCLA.
That's accompanied a drop in turnovers that has made Utah's offense even more efficient. After starting the season with 11 or more turnovers in 11 non-conference games, the Utes have had 11 or more only once in all of conference play. The Utes have a plus-margin in turnovers in Pac-12 play and have a 1.4 assist-to-turnover ratio.
With a tough game against ranked Oregon coming up Thursday, Krystkowiak said that he doesn't believe in momentum — that a string of strong performances doesn't guarantee of another yet to come.
But the Utes are giving their coach reason to think they can handle the challenge.
Twitter: @kylegoon —
Oregon at Utah
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