Arizona State’s zone defense trips up Utah in one of Utes’ ‘more selfish games of the year’

The University of Utah men’s basketball team got off to the start it wanted to at Arizona State on Saturday.

The Runnin’ Utes were up 14-5 at the 15:03 mark of the first half, as Keanu Dawes and Terrence Brown lifted them to the big lead at Deseret Financial Arena in Tempe, Arizona.

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Things fell apart after that, though, as Arizona State’s zone defense stifled the Utes much of the day in a 73-60 Sun Devils victory.

Utah ended up shooting 39% for the game and 34.5% in the first half, while Arizona State was 49.1% from the field (53.8% in the second half) and made 9 of 17 3-pointers.

The Utes, too, had a pair of extended droughts in each half.

In the first half, Utah went more than eight minutes between scores as Arizona State finished the stanza on a 20-5 run to take a 34-24 lead into the break.

In the second half, Utah had a three-minute stretch when it didn’t score and the Sun Devils pushed their lead from 59-53 to 68-53 with just 3:52 to play to seal the win.

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“The problem was when we passed it. (It was) one of our worst pass games of the year,” Utah coach Alex Jensen said in his postgame interview on ESPN 700 AM.

Again, Jensen saw guys on the offensive side trying to make plays happen on their own.

“It was discouraging because I think it was one of our more selfish games of the year,” he said. “You got to use your teammates and if you want to be good, whether it’s individually, you need your teammates, and I thought we did a poor job of passing.

“I think we tried too hard to do it on our own and score.”

The loss leaves Utah (10-19, 2-14 Big 12) going into the final week of the regular season humbled after it had shown signs of improvement over the previous two weeks.

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Brown, the Utes’ leading scorer, had four points, two rebounds and an assist in the game’s first three minutes before picking up his second foul with 16:55 to play until halftime.

He ended up with just eight points on 4 of 12 shooting, while adding five…

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Publish date : 2026-03-01 00:42:00

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