They have that now in coach Jim Boylen, who by his own description has worked the Utes as "hard as the rules will allow."

Boylen can create all kinds of gameplans, fancy plays, and stiff defenses to put his team in a position to win. He can give motivational speeches, make sure his players' classwork is being taken care of and enforce team rules to make sure they're in the right mind frame to win. The one thing he can't do? Actually show them how to win. That, the Utes are coming to understand, takes more than just a change of the name of the coach who sits next to them on the bench.

It takes some personal learning, and oh boy has that learning been painful now that the Utes are in conference play and struggling to be mediocre.

"We're so close," senior Johnnie Bryant said. "We know we're right there."

They just aren't there, yet. A win here and a win there is great.

A close loss or overtime decision that goes against the Utes as several have recently is maddeningly frustrating knowing how close success was to only end in failure. But at some point winning becomes more than just following through with a gameplan, it takes the mentality too. That is the missing piece the Utes badly need now, if only they knew what exactly it was.

"I want to say there is a winning mentality, but you know, we haven't won, so I don't know if we have one or not," senior Chris Grant said.

How to get it? Keep working, and keep improving Boylen said. No doubt the Utes are better than they were a year ago. The defense is better and the offense, while inconsistent, is more imaginative than it was under Giacoletti.

"Last year, we couldn't score and we weren't good on the defensive end, and on any given night we'd lose by 20," senior Johnnie Bryant said. "Now we're losing by five or less or in overtime. I know we're getting better."

Yet there are still first-half defensive lapses, careless free throw shooting and bad offensive decisions that bug Boylen. He is frustrated and disappointed and his stomach twists over thoughts of close losses.

"To become winners is a very difficult thing," he said. "There is a point where you have to push through and I think we're at that wall now, pushing on it.

The wall hasn't fallen over yet, but what I'm trying to do is get us to understand it will fall over."

That final push though has to come from the team. Boylen doesn't like the notion of coaches vs. players, preferring to think of the program as a whole, but he doesn't back down from the belief that his team has to not only buy into the accountability he preaches, but play with it.

"They have to take ownership, it can't just be me saying it," he said. "I'm going to fight for them and battle for them, but I have to give them the reality of the situation too. . . . They have to understand winning isn't easy."

They're getting that part. As for the rest? The mentality that winning is hard but dang it they're going to get it done? That is still a work in progress, slow progress though it may be.

"The coaches have put us in a position to be successful," Bryant said. "They're doing their job and helping us get better and we're doing everything we can. We're ready for a change."

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* LYA WODRASKA can be reached at lwodraska@sltrib.com. To write a letter about this or any sports topic, send an e-mail to sportseditor@sltrib.com.