The moment he touched the ball for the first time, Utah's Carlon Brown drove straight for the basket, weaved through a couple of TCU Horned Frogs, and dropped in a layup. Teammates Shaun Green and Tyler Kepkay quickly added three-pointers, and before long, Johnnie Bryant was getting into the act.

There would be no close finish, this time.

Breaking from their recent trend of losing heartbreakers at the finish, the Utes erupted from the start against the Horned Frogs at the Huntsman Center on Saturday - streaking to a 17-point lead within eight minutes and cruising to a 74-58 victory that snapped a painful three-game losing streak in front of a crowd of 9,054.

"It's a huge relief," guard Lawrence Borha said. "We lost three straight, we needed a win - badly."

The Utes finally earned one by shooting well - guard Johnnie Bryant scored 24 points on a school-record eight of the team's season-high 14 three-pointers - and beating the Horned Frogs at their own game, forcing turnover after turnover early in the game to establish control.

The Frogs entered the game riding a three-game winning streak and leading the Mountain West Conference in steals and turnovers forced with their pressure defense. But they committed five turnovers and missed their first seven shots while going without a basket for more than seven minutes to start the game.

"That really helped," Utah's Luke Nevill said. "We knew that we had to have kind of a punch at the start."

While the Horned Frogs were throwing the ball all over the gym, the Utes were sinking practically everything they threw up, and built a 14-1 lead by the time TCU's Brent Hackett actually put the ball through the hoop. Then Bryant entered the game, buried a couple of three-pointers, and the Utes had a 20-3 lead that was never threatened. The Horned Frogs fell to 11-7 overall and 3-2 in the league, and lost for the 13th time in 14 regular-season road games since beating the Utes last season.

"To lose three games the way we did and to come back and be ready to play and play our butts off and compete and share the ball," coach Jim Boylen said, "I've never been prouder of a team or prouder to be part of a team in my life. . . . It's one win, but it's a big win for us."

The Utes never lost control of the game, or suffered the kind of scoring drought that had become their recent habit. Instead, Bryant buried three more of his bombs in about four minutes after TCU cut the lead to 40-32 early in the second half - the first two were part of a 10-0 run - and assured the Utes wouldn't be bothered again.

"They made it really tough on us in how we could defend them by making shots," TCU coach Neil Dougherty said. "You gotta give them credit for doing that."

mcl@sltrib.com

Utah 74, TCU 58