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LOS ANGELES — The Runnin' Utes will open the inaugural Pac-12 tournament on Wednesday night against Colorado, the same team they played to open the Pac-12 regular season.
Only in this opener, the Utes will hope for much different results.
The Buffaloes romped Utah for a 73-33 beatdown on Dec. 31 in Boulder, Colo. Freshman guard Spencer Dinwiddie led all scorers with 19 for Colorado, and sophomore forward Andre Roberson put in 17 points and 17 boards.
The Utes fared much better during the Feb. 18 rematch, hanging around in a close game before falling 55-48 at the Huntsman Center. Junior center Jason Washburn led Utah with 16 points and 10 rebounds, but Roberson again led the Buffaloes to victory with 12 points and 16 boards.
With the exception of Saturday's 94-48 drubbing at the hands of Oregon — which marked the worst loss in Utah school history — the Utes have gotten much better over the course of the season and have been significantly more competitive during this last stretch of games.
"I don’t think any team wants to play us right now, because we’re ‘the worst team here,’ but we’ll give them good competition," Utah guard Cedric Martin said. "And not a lot of teams want that from what is so-called ‘the worst team in the Pac-12.’ No team wants to be beat by ‘the worst team in the Pac-12.’ So I think we’re still able to compete with all the teams, and not a lot of those teams want to play us anymore, as they see we’ve gotten a lot better."
Utah will look to continue to improve in hopes to pull off the upset Wednesday night.
"We got to buy in to what it takes for this team to be good," Washburn said. "People look at us as not (having) as much talent as a lot of teams, or not this, not that. But we know we can be competitive, and every game we got to bring the mindset that we got to give our all, and we got to play together."
Washburn leads the Utes in both scoring and rebounding this season, scoring 11.4 points with 6.2 boards per game. He is coming off a career performance at Oregon, scoring a career-high 26 points with seven rebounds and two blocks. Washburn will look to carry the momentum of that performance into the conference tournament.
Junior guard Chris Hines is averaging 9.6 points this season, and 11.4 points during conference play. He's scored double figures in 10 of the last 12 contests, and leads the Pac-12 in 3-pointers made per game during conference play, knocking down 2.6 shots from long range per game.
As the team’s third-leading scorer (7.5 points per game), third-leading rebounder (3.2) and second on the team in assists (2.0), Martin has been the most versatile player on Utah's roster this season. He currently posts the team’s best assist-to-turnover ratio (1.4) and is one of the team’s best defenders. Martin is also seeing the most minutes of any Ute, at 31.1 per game.
I don't think any team wants to play us right now, because we're ‘the worst team here.' No team wants to be beat by ‘the worst team in the Pac-12.'
–Utah guard Cedric Martin
"We haven’t played (Colorado) in a while, and we haven’t played them with the experience that we have now," Martin said. "Even though it was a short road, I think that with the experience that we have now, we could put a big dent in the Pac-12 tournament. Take it as far as we can, take it game by game and don’t get ahead of ourselves and say, ‘oh we’re dreaming about winning the whole thing.’ We just need to take it game-by-game, and play-by-play."
Aside from a big win in its home finale, Utah (6-24, 3-15) has lost 10 of the last 11 contests and will be looking to snag another big win to cause a stir in the conference playoffs.
"It was huge," Hines said of the last win at home. "We needed to finish the season off with a win at home. We knew that if we won our last home game, it would help us a lot moving forward to the end of the season and into the tournament."
Colorado (19-11, 11-7) also finished the regular season with back-to-back losses at Oregon and Oregon State, and lost three of its last four after beating Utah on Feb. 18.
The Buffaloes are led by senior guard and former-Ute Carlon Brown, who scores 12.2 points per game with 3.5 rebounds. Roberson is averaging a double-double, with 11.2 points and 11.2 boards. Senior forward Austin Dufault averages 11.1 points and 4.5 rebounds, while Dinwiddie rounds out the double-digit scorers with 10.3 per game.
Utah has lost four straight against Colorado, with its last victory coming in Dec. of 2004.
The game tips off from the Staples Center at 9:30 p.m., and will be broadcast on ROOT Sports, as well as on the radio at 700 AM.
