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SALT LAKE CITY — In a game that lacked a real rhythm between two teams, Utah held on in the second half to claim a 75-67 win over the visiting Utah Valley Wolverines in an empty Huntsman Center on Tuesday.
Utah Valley (2-4) opened up the game looking to establish early dominance and shot at a high clip while the Wolverines outrebounded Utah to take a 5-point lead, their largest lead of the game. But after some back-and-forth, Utah (3-1, 1-0) reeled off a 10-0 run at the 8-minute mark in the first half to pull away from the Wolverines, and the rest was history.
Or at least that's what the Utes thought.
After establishing a 15-point lead in the second half, the largest lead of the game for the Utes, Utah Valley's Evan Cole, who finished with a game-high 31 points and 10 rebounds, took the game into his own hands and cut Utah's lead to 3 points with just over five minutes left to play in regulation. Trey Woodbury later cut Utah's lead to 1 with 3:21 left to play in regulation.
But that's as close as the Wolverines would get as Utah held Utah Valley scoreless down the final stretch and slowly built up its lead, mostly on made free throws, to escape with the narrow home win.
"Well, we managed to make some plays when we needed to, but it was a gutsy ball game," Utah head coach Larry Krystkowiak said. "UVU stayed in it, made some big shots late, ran a couple of particular actions that we hadn't seen a lot of and took us by surprise and they scored points.
"Nobody said that this was gonna be easy and that certainly wasn't, but it was a good win for our guys."
Junior Timmy Allen led Utah in scoring with 19 points on 8-of-17 shooting from the field and six rebounds and two steals. Allen had 9 first-half points before establishing himself more in the offensive game plan in the second half, which included two transition dunks off steals to pace Utah to its largest lead of the game.
Sophomore center Branden Carlson, one of four Utah players to score in double figures, established a base in the post early for the Utes and had 12 first-half points to keep Utah Valley from pulling away with a larger lead.
Eventually, Utah settled in and multiple contributors joined in on offense to finish the half shooting 50% from the field and keep the Utes in control with a 6-point lead at the break. Carlson finished with 14 points, four blocks and two rebounds in the win.
Rylan Jones and Alfonso Plummer each finished with 12 points apiece to round out Utah's leading scorers.
For the third straight game, Utah was outrebounded by its opponent — this time a lower five-rebound differential (34-29). The Wolverines established a physical style of play in the post and knocked Utah out of position. The rebounding, though, wasn't much of a difference-maker as Utah Valley only finished with 4 second-chance points.
"This is gonna be a work in progress, I would anticipate, for the whole season," Krystkowiak said. "It's going to be a point of emphasis. It's not a great thing that we're talking about — kind of celebrating — that we only got outrebounded by five. I think rebounding wins games.
"Oftentimes, we did make improvements, but certainly when we start stepping into Pac-12 play, which is a week from today, we're talking about some elite athletes and some elite rebounders, and we're gonna have to continue to focus on it all the way through."
Utah Valley challenged Utah, but couldn't overcome a 20-turnover night that kept the Wolverines from maintaining any momentum it had. Many of the team's turnovers were offensive fouls on a night when 42 fouls were called in the game between the two teams.
"I was really proud of our guys," Utah Valley head coach Mark Madsen said. "It's tough to win a game like this with 20 turnovers. We talked about that in the locker room, and we've got to get better than that.
"We'll work on that. We'll get better."
Utah will return to action Friday when it welcomes Idaho to the Huntsman Center at 7 p.m. in the final nonconference game of the season. Utah will resume Pac-12 play on Dec. 22 when it welcomes Arizona State to the Huntsman Center before taking a brief holiday break.
