Yet still, the Utah Utes haven't mastered the art of finishing close games.

Sure, they won at Cal last month with a desperation fling at the horn. But that might as well have been a year ago, for all of the frustration the Utes have felt (and criticism they have endured) after falling apart at game-breaking moments of their last three games - all excruciating losses to rivals from the Mountain West Conference.

Now, with the Utes meeting TCU at the Huntsman Center today, they're simply hoping the trend will finally end, one way or another.

"We just know it's going to come," guard Luka Drca said. "We just need to win one game and after that, it's going to be way, way easier. And we can do it."

Maybe so.

But as the Utes themselves have been proving, it's not easy.

Making all of the right plays during the intense crucible of a tight finish is an inexact science that isn't easily taught or remedied. Some coaches believe that players are simply born with the ability to step up in crunch time, while others believe they can learn the skill - but often, only through painful experience.

"Unless you have guys who are inherently knowledgable about how to salt games away - and I don't think Utah has that, by the way - what you need to do is work a lot in practice on special situations," said Dave Bollwinkel, the former St. Mary's coach and NBA scout who works as a broadcaster on the mtn. "I call that the 'kicking game' of basketball."

Sounds simple, right?

But Boylen has always dedicated portions of his practice sessions to "special situations."

Just the other day, in fact, he ran the Utes through a series of them, putting varying amounts of time on a shot clock and imagining that the team led by one point, say, or trailed by two. Perhaps tellingly, senior guard Johnnie Bryant earned a scolding for not following directions.

The Utes also review the videotape of every game, parsing every foul and turnover, every missed shot and conceded rebound.

"We meticulously go over the plays that we should have made at both ends that we didn't make," Boylen said. "And you just keep reinforcing it, reinforcing it, reinforcing it. 'This is what we should have done, this is what we didn't do.' "

The list of things the Utes didn't do during crunch time of the last three games is long, and includes most of the basic elements of the game - hitting open shots, making free throws, maintaining possessions and preventing offensive rebounds.

Twice in that span, the Utes lost in overtime on the road - at San Diego State and New Mexico - after missing opportunities to win in the final seconds of regulation, and they fell to Brigham Young at home when their strategy of running down the clock to get one last shot backfired.

"We just didn't make enough plays," Boylen said.

On the other hand, Boylen believes the Utes have done much of what ordinarily would be required to win close games - except make free throws. They're just 18-for-33 from the line in the last three games, sabotaging everything else.

"We got to the line, we got open shots that we should make," Boylen said. "Now, there's another part of it, where you make the play. But we had successful looks and we got fouled and . . . how do I explain that? I tell my guys to drive the ball at the end of the clock, Kepkay drives in there, gets fouled and misses the free throw.

"I tell Luka to drive the ball at the end of the clock, he drives in there, gets [what should have been] an 'and-one,' but they don't count the bucket and he misses the front end of the one-and-one."

And so it goes for the Utes.

Former college coach Marty Fletcher said one problem the Utes might be having is finding a player who's confident and experienced enough to take over in crunch time - especially when coaches spend the rest of the year coaching players to share the ball and be unselfish.

"It's not that these guys aren't capable of taking over a game," he said, "it's that they're not used to it in the course of the season. . . . You can have the best offense in the world, but when it gets down to crunch time, you've got to have players make plays. Simple as that."

mcl@sltrib.com