Utah guard Justin Bibbins was convinced the pass that would produce his 12th assist of Sunday’s game sailed way too high.
So did the basketball’s intended receiver, but the play worked beautifully. “Never doubt yourself, I guess,” said Ute forward Tyler Rawson, whose catch and dunk punctuated an 82-69 win over Washington State at the Huntsman Center and gave himself a play to remember.
“Definitely,” Rawson said, “my highlight of the season, so far.”
That’s saying something, on a night when Rawson made his first six 3-point attempts. This coaching stuff actually works sometimes. Larry Krystkowiak repeatedly designed plays for Rawson, and the 6-foot-10 player from American Fork High School and Salt Lake Community College kept hitting shots.
“You’re a heck of a lot better coach when the guys make ’em,” Krystkowiak said.
Made baskets also help point guards look good. Bibbins finished with 12 assists, the first double-figures game for a Utah player in nearly two years, and four of those came via Rawson’s 3-pointers.
And that explains how the Utes thrived amid the foul trouble of inside players David Collette and Donnie Tillman, who combined for nine points. The fill-in production came from some unlikely sources, judging by recent results. Gabe Bealer scored 15 points after totaling 16 in Utah’s previous seven Pac-12 games. Sedrick Barefield came off the bench with 14 points, after making one field goal in the last three games.
Rawson finished with 22 points, his career high for a conference game, after scoring six, five and seven in the previous three contests. He never had hit more than four 3-pointers in a Division I game until Sunday, when his six shots came in the game’s first 26 minutes.
Barefield’s move out of the starting lineup apparently worked in his favor — and Rawson’s too. Krystkowiak liked the matchup of Rawson as an outside shooter against the Cougars, and he kept going to him. Who knows what may have happened if Rawson had missed his first couple of shots, considering he was hitting only 30 percent of his 3-point attempts in Pac-12 play.
The fact is, he started hot and stayed that way. As Rawson walked across the court after the game, take-out food in hand, to greet family members, teammates kiddingly announced, “Make way for the superstar!”
Imagine how they would have treated Rawson if he had not air-balled his seventh 3-point try. “I got a little too excited on that one,” he said, smiling in the interview room.
Even that offensive sequence turned out well for him, as he turned Collette’s rebound into a twisting jumper in the lane. Then came his dunk of Bibbins’ pass, basically ending a night when the Utes could feel good about themselves.
Temporarily, anyway. That’s how this league works. With this sweep of the Washington schools, the Utes have played their way back to 4-4 and a three-way tie for fifth in the Pac-12. They’ve spent other Mondays of this month in first and 10th places, and now they’re right in the middle with three opponents looming on the road: Arizona State, Arizona and Colorado.
The Utes will have to do something extraordinary to make the NCAA Tournament, the line of success or failure for any program’s season. Along the way, though, this Pac-12 competition will be fun.
The encouraging development is Utah’s healthy, during a season when Rawson’s availability for practice every day has made Krystkowiak label him a “warrior.” He’s also a good passer, rebounder and defender, the kind of all-around player that has made Utah’s program function in this decade.
Rawson posted 15 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists in a December loss at BYU. He may have produced a triple double in Provo if his teammates had made more shots. Bibbins knows how that works. His assist total kept climbing Sunday, thanks largely to Rawson’s success, and the Utes outshot a team that lives by 3-pointers by going 13 of 31 themselves. As Krystkowiak said, “Those 3s add up fast.”
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