Columnist Dean Juipe: Utah less imposing than usual

Dean Juipe

Friday, March 10, 2000 | 10:20 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

Shortcomings is a word that doesn't normally apply to the Utah men's basketball team, particularly in recent years.

The Utes are routinely tough and there's nothing short about them. Year in and year out it's as if they're cut from the same cloth: They're always extremely tall, always very good shooters and always very white.

This year's team generally fits the typical Utah mode. The guys are skyscrapers, they're sharpshooters, and, inconsequentially, they're as vanilla in appearance as any team in America.

But the Utah team that's in town this weekend for the Mountain West Conference tournament has an atypical vulnerability. It lacks a first-rate ball handler and at times is downright sloppy.

Both negatives were on display Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center as the Utes allowed a badly mismatched Air Force team to stay in the game with them before taking a 74-65 win before a largely partisan crowd of 6,234.

Utah's physically intimidating presence aside, it was an unimpressive performance no matter what head coach Rick Majerus had to say about it.

"I thought it was a good game," he somehow offered, perhaps in a token effort to throw Air Force a bone. "I thought our effort was great. I'm proud of the guys."

If that was a good game by Utah, the door is open for the Rebels -- who split a pair of regular-season games with the Utes -- to win Saturday's MWC final and receive an invitation to the NCAA Tournament the following day.

But here's the real catch in the equation: Since the season began, virtually every prognosticator has projected Utah into the 64-team NCAA event. In fact, that's still the case in spite of the Utes losing three of their last six games, surrendering the conference lead and dropping out of the polls.

So, Coach Majerus, will your team be in the Big Dance even if it loses tonight or Saturday?

"I don't know that," he replied in your basic guarded response. "No one's told me."

The general assumption is that Utah is in on the strength of its 22-7 record, its vaunted tradition and its potential lottery pick big man, Hanno Mottola. But the Utes have no more chance to win the national championship than UNLV, and, right now, the Rebels arguably look better and could force the NCAA Selection Committee to count them in even if it has already set aside a spot for Utah.

Actually, it's in UNLV's best interest to have Utah win tonight's semifinal game with Brigham Young, assuming that it would set up a Utah-UNLV final. If the Rebels need an emphatic win to conclude the regular season, they can only be helped by having it come at Utah's expense.

In years past, Utah was tall and efficient. Coming into this season Majerus' teams had gone a collective 142-26 since 1994 and looked sharp doing it.

But the team he has this year is missing something and it's the graduated point guard Andre Miller. While the Utes can still shoot and still have wingspans that stretch from here to Provo, they're not deep and they're not as adept with the ball.

"We stand on our accomplishments to date," Majerus said. "But I don't think we're going to win every game we have left to play."

That would seem to be a certainty.