Runnin' Utes hoping to reclaim confidence, success in Pac-12 Tournament

SALT LAKE CITY — Craig Smith didn't have to look too far to give his team an example of how the No. 7 seed in the Pac-12 Tournament can go on a run and win it all.

Last week, seventh-seeded Washington State upset the second-seeded Utah women in the quarterfinal round of the tournament en route to the program's first Pac-12 championship on Sunday. Although a rare feat, a postseason run in the conference tournament is possible for Smith's team, just like Washington State.

"That's the beauty of March Madness," Smith said. "We saw it a couple of years ago with Oregon State. You can catch lightning in the bottle — survive and advance, they say. Everybody goes in there with one path, and you've got to win every game to make sure you're in."

But none of that is possible if Utah can't win the first one on Wednesday (7 p.m. MST, Pac-12 Networks) against a Stanford team that many see as the upset favorite of the Pac-12 Tournament, even as the No. 10 seed. The Cardinal started the conference slate going 0-7, but then picked up some momentum and reeled off a five-game win streak.

"Our goal, our expectation, we're going in there to win the thing," Smith said. "You've got to win four games in four days, and the first thing we talked about in order to do that is you've got to win the first game. So game two, three and four don't matter until you get there."

Stanford is a lengthy team that can disrupt Utah — the Cardinal did in the back-end game of the home-and-home series this season with a 78-72 win at the Huntsman Center — and has seemed to find a better offensive game in the latter half of its schedule. The Cardinal aren't perfect by any means, but they're significantly better than their No. 10 seed in the tournament suggests.

During Stanford's opening stretch of conference play, the Cardinal averaged 66.3 points per game, which matches their seven-game losing streak. In their final 13 conference games, the Cardinal averaged 72.3 points and finished the season with the highest effective field goal percentage (53.1%) and 3-point percentage (37.9%) in the Pac-12.

To add to that, they're the third-best team in the Pac-12 in offensive rebounds, which gave the Cardinal plenty of second-chance opportunities to score. It's what doomed Utah in their loss to Stanford when the team got offensive rebounds and kicked out for a barrage of 3-pointers.

Utah opens the contest as a 1-point favorite, but enters the conference tournament on a five-game losing skid.

The optics aren't great for an Utah team that has failed to put together an offense as of late and has been without Gabe Madsen for five weeks and Rollie Worster for a week. Even senior Marco Anthony was severely banged up going into the regular season finale against Colorado, Smith said, and didn't practice in the week leading up to the game. All three played against Colorado but the team still lost as it looked to reclaim its chemistry.

In Madsen's absence, Utah struggled to put together an offense that could contend with most teams in the Pac-12 — especially those in the upper half of the conference standings late in the season. In the first 11 games of conference play, which coincides when Madsen was on the court, Utah averaged 67.9 points and had a defense that was near the top of the Pac-12 in several statistical categories.

Once Madsen was out of the lineup over the next eight games, Utah's scoring average dropped to 62.9 points per game and the team lost six of those games.

It was a team that Smith said "limped" into the postseason, but one that still feels like it's in a "good place." Having a full roster available and the "continuity" that can come with that has certainly changed things for the team, he said. Continuity breeds confidence, Smith said, and he hopes his team can reclaim a bit of the magic that had Utah with the third-best standings in the conference a few weeks ago.

"There's going to be stretches you shoot it at a high level, there's going to be stretches where you struggle a little bit; and we're on one of those downsides right now, so hopefully we can snap out of that and get a little bit of continuity going into the conference tournament," Smith said. "But confidence, I mean, confidence matters, too. And so hopefully we get that."

While Stanford hasn't been perfect down the stretch of the regular season, they've prove to be a disrupter. But Utah hopes with its starting unit back that there's a little bit of the a Washington State-like run in them.

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