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OREM — On the opening night of Western Athletic Conference play in the middle of the semester break, Utah Valley rolled to 1-0 against what was a top-20 team nationally to send a big message to the rest of the league.
At times, the Wolverines — who jumped up 13 spots to No. 77 in the NET rankings with their seventh straight win — looked more like the top-20 team than the Sam Houston State squad that came into Orem after nonconference road wins over Oklahoma and Utah.
Tahj Small poured in a season-high 19 points off the bench, Tim Fuller added 10 points, 11 rebounds and six assists, and UVU led by as many as 23 points in the second half en route to an 80-64 win over the Bearkats that cemented the Wolverines as conference contenders.
Le'Tre Darthard scored 15 points, and Justin Harmon added 12 points and six assists for the Wolverines (10-4, 1-0 WAC), who shot 51% from the field, scored 23 points off 12 turnovers, and never trailed in the second half (and for just 2 minutes, 11 seconds overall).
It was a dominant show of force for Utah Valley, which outrebounded the Bearkats 43-36, outscored the visitors 30-22 in the paint, and posted 11 blocks while assisting on 24-of-30 made baskets in the win.
But back to Small, the 6-foot-5, 195-pound senior transfer from Tarleton State who dropped a career-high 28 points a year ago for the Texans in a win over Sam Houston State before averaging 6.2 points and 3.0 rebounds per game in 23.1 minutes per game for the Wolverines.
"Tahj Small has changed multiple games for us this season," UVU coach Mark Madsen said. "Some of the plays he makes, very few players can make; we knew that because he made them against us when he was at Tarleton.
"Tahj was really key with his energy off the bench."
If it felt like a big game, outside of an announced crowd of less than 2,000 that looked more sparse with a spread-out 8,500-seat arena that had UCCU-branded tarps hanging over much of the north side of the building, that's because it was. But that's not how the Wolverines tried to look at it, even after seeing the hype videos on social media and the rankings scroll across their feeds via several news and other sources.
"It was a good game, but we try not to get too high or too low on any opponent," Fuller said. "The thing with the WAC is any team can beat you on any given night; you can never let your guard down.
"Come Saturday, we have to be ready to play (again). It's a fun conference to be in this year; there's a lot of good basketball."
The WAC — whose top team, Sam Houston (10-3, 0-1) dropped from No. 20 to No. 33 with its second loss in six games — has been among the most upstart leagues in men's college basketball during nonconference play, with streaking teams Utah Tech and Utah Valley owning winning runs of six and seven straight, respectively, and 10-win teams Utah Valley, Sam Houston State and Grand Canyon leading a pack of 11 teams with at least eight wins.
The league is ranked 11th-best nationally, behind the oft-mentioned "Power Six" that includes the Big East, and just behind the Mountain West, West Coast, American and Conference USA conferences, by TeamRankings.com. The WAC's 0.510 rating ranks ahead of the Atlantic 10, ASUN and Sun Belt, and has a chance to put the conference on a path for multiple NCAA Tournament bids this March for the first time in the league's modern era.
Utah Valley's rating in the latest NET ranks third among Utah schools, behind No. 21 Utah State and No. 38 Utah. But the Wolverines put them all on notice Thursday night in their only meeting of the regular season with the Bearkats.
"When you look at the WAC, it probably doesn't get its just-due," said Madsen, whose team also has road wins over BYU and Oregon during a seven-game win streak that dates back to Nov. 26 at Boise State. "But in the last several months, I think the basketball world is taking notice of how competitive it is. I was talking to a Power Five school, and they asked me who to schedule.
"The more they looked at it, they saw 5-6 teams in the WAC that are having one of the best basketball runs in the history of the school. You're seeing a lot of Power Fives not want to schedule WAC teams. Then depth, the competitiveness, the players and the coaching styles; it's an honor to be part of the WAC."
It doesn't get any easier, either. The Wolverines spin around 48 hours later to host in-state rival Utah Tech (9-5, 1-0 WAC) at 2 p.m. MST Saturday. The battle of streaking teams that dates back to the 1972-73 season in the junior college Scenic West Athletic Conference features two of the hottest teams in the WAC after the Trailblazers' 81-66 home win over Texas-Rio Grande Valley on Thursday night.
It's a series that includes Utah Tech's 80-75 overtime win a year ago at Burns Arena in St. George that marked the first-ever win over Utah Valley in the program's short Division I era.
"It's a home game for us, so I would encourage all of Utah Valley to come out and watch two really exciting basketball teams have a slugfest," Madsen said. "Utah Tech runs great sets, they have some explosive players and athletes, and any time you play in-state, the level of energy is off the charts."
