This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Athletic director Chris Hill can pinpoint the moment when he knew Utah's basketball program would thrive under coach Larry Krystkowiak.
The evidence surfaced long before the Utes became a top-10 team — even in the Pac-12.
In the late stages of a 6-25 season in 2011-12, Hill marveled at what he witnessed in the Huntsman Center. "They're playing hard, they're playing unselfish, they're setting screens, they're not messing around," Hill recalled. "This is at the end of February, and basketball can be considered one of the most selfish sports. None of that happened. They were doing what [Krystkowiak] told them to. So I'm not saying it would be where it is today, but I knew the worm would turn."
So here are the Utes, taking a No. 8 ranking — in the country — into Thursday's game at Arizona State. Then comes Saturday's visit to No. 10 Arizona, Utah's first meeting of top-10 teams since the 1998 NCAA championship game vs. Kentucky.
How did this happen?
Whenever anyone remarks to Krystkowiak about how quickly the turnaround has occurred, he responds that it seems like "a lot of days" to him since he took over the program in April 2011. But the Utes have gone from steady growth to accelerated progress this season, making Krystkowiak's work all the more remarkable.
No, I did not see this coming. I'm acknowledging having been less than overwhelmed by Krystkowiak's hiring, reviewing his credentials at the time and declaring him a composite character of former Ute coaches Ray Giacoletti and Jim Boylen, and Tyrone Corbin, who had just replaced Jerry Sloan with the Jazz.
Not my most accurate call, obviously. Hill takes responsibility for those previous hirings, but he also gives himself credit for having pursued his current coach one vacancy earlier, just before Krystkowiak was promoted as the Milwaukee Bucks' head coach in 2007.
The best players from Boylen's team transferred, so Krystkowiak was left with a makeshift group that somehow won three Pac-12 games and finished 11th, ahead of USC. None of those Utah players is still in the program, three years later, but apparently enough of a culture was established to extend into the next class of recruits. The likes of Jordan Loveridge and Brandon Taylor learned from Cedric Martin and Jason Washburn, who persevered through that initial season and deserve credit for helping to build something that would last.
It helps that he knows how the story turned out, but Krystkowiak said he views that season as "an awful fun year."
That's as opposed to just plain awful, even though the Utes trailed 52-18, 67-33, 51-20 and 34-2 at various checkpoints of games.
"We maximized what we had," Krystkowiak said, describing a "rewarding" season.
Krystkowiak is an in-the-moment guy, but he occasionally pauses to think about those days, when he was just trying to figure out how to keep his team from being blown out, while knowing that recruiting would translate into better days ahead. "It is nice to know where you've come from," he said.
The Utes temporarily had to get worse in order to get better. They were not aided by high draft picks, like an NBA team, although it almost seems that way. The upgraded recruiting effort by Krystkowiak's staff has fulfilled his promise to "get the pride back" in the program, as he said during his introductory news conference.
Anyone would say he has done that, and this might be just the start.
Twitter: @tribkurt