Lynne Roberts will be the first to tell you this season has been draining.
She lost her most dynamic scorer just eight games into the season. Her starting backcourt — with Issy Palmer and Gianna Kneepkens — has played in 20 games combined. By the time Utah took the floor at UCLA this week, she had tried four different starting lineups to piece together a rotation.
All in, it has taken a preseason top-five team and, at times, maddeningly reduced it to a collection of talented pieces that just don’t fit.
“This season hasn’t been as smooth or maybe as easy as we thought it might be,” Roberts said. “But that is sports. That’s life. We are handling it.”
Still, Utah Is 19-8, with three games left in the regular season. A chance to host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament (with a top-four seed) is still on the table, but it will require some work.
Here is a snapshot of Utah’s resume, and its path to playing a postseason game at the Huntsman Center.
Record: 19-7
NET: 6
Best wins: Colorado (home), USC (home), UCLA (home)
Worst losses: Arizona (road)
It’s not that Utah’s resume is littered with bad losses, but it is the lack of road production and consistency that’s an issue.
Utah has broken through at home on several occasions. It swept UCLA and USC in one weekend. It beat Colorado last week. All of those teams are currently projected to be top-four seeds in the NCAA Tournament (with the Buffaloes on the one-line).
But when the Utes travel outside the state, they have struggled. They dropped a game to Arizona (a team that is 14-12). They gave away a late lead to Colorado. And they were simply blown out by Oregon State in Corvallis.
Unlike last year, the close games Utah pulled off for upsets haven’t happened. It hung around against South Carolina, but lost. It couldn’t get a last-second shot against Stanford to drop.
Any of those wins would have likely moved Utah more solidly into the top 16 by the committee (and hosting the first two rounds). Instead, the committee left Utah out of its top 16 projections despite its high NET ranking.
Last week, Roberts said Utah would need to finish 3-2 or 4-1 in its final five regular season games to crack into the top 16. That was before it beat Colorado at home.
Utah got blown out on the road at UCLA on Thursday. The Utes have another top-25 test at USC this weekend. Then Utah finishes out with Washington State and Washington (two teams toward the bottom of the standings).
Utah will likely need to get one more high-end win to get a top-four seed and host the first two rounds.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Utes guard Ines Vieira (2) takes the ball to the hoop, as Colorado Buffaloes guard Tameiya Sadler (2) defends, in basketball action at the Jon M. Huntsman Center, on Friday, Feb. 16, 2024.
The Pac-12 tournament will also be critical for a team living on the edge. A strong showing in Las Vegas would go a long way to getting into the four-seed range.
“For us to host the NCAA Tournament, we got to finish out the four regular season games well and then we can’t lay an egg in the Pac-12 tournament,” Roberts said. “We have to make some noise there, too.”
One factor will be whether Utah gets a first-round bye in Vegas. The top four seeds skip the first day and play one fewer game.
Utah knows this all too well. When it made a run to the championship game in Vegas two years ago, it was a six-seed. The extra game took its toll in the fourth quarter and Utah lost.
“We were playing well but you can tell our tank was empty,” she said. “So that first-round bye is huge.”
Utah is in a six-team race to get the four byes. Stanford is at the top. Colorado, UCLA, USC, Oregon State and Utah are separated by a game. A win over USC would help get Utah into the top four and better position it to make a run in Vegas.
“We are all playing each other. So it is going to be pretty decisive,” Roberts said.
Either way, for both the NCAA Tournament seeding and the Pac-12 tournament, games against UCLA and USC this week will go a long way to determining the outcome.
In a season that has gone sideways so many times, this will be Utah’s final shot to end up in the Huntsman Center.
“Everyone is playing for NCAA seeding,” Roberts said. “We want to host.”