SALT LAKE CITY — Terrence Brown took the game into his own hands.
The star guard for the Runnin’ Utes scored 18 of his game-high 26 points — including four made 3-pointers — in the second half to help his team to an 82-79 win over TCU at the Huntsman Center Saturday afternoon.
And there may have been a bit of an added reason for that.
Brown said TNT analyst and former NBA player Greg Anthony told him before the game that TCU was going to “punk” — or embarrassing — the last-place Utes. In the end, Brown and the Runnin’ Utes were the last ones standing and got the final word.
It resulted in Utah (9-9, 1-4 Big 12) earning its first Big 12 win of the Alex Jensen era in what was a wire-to-wire finish from the Utes.
“Happy for our guys to get the win,” Utah head coach Alex Jensen said. “I don’t think we had as many peak and valleys. We kind of were steady for most of the game.”
It was arguably Utah’s most consistent game of the season and one in which the Utes never trailed.
The Utes started off the game on a 14-0 run as TCU (11-7, 1-4 Big 12) failed to make a bucket for the first six and a half minutes of game time. The early lead came, in part, as a result of Utah’s aggressiveness in the post to secure rebounds and give the team second-chance opportunities.
Utah maintained a double-digit lead for much of the first half behind five made 3-pointers on 10 attempts to help bypass a trapping defense TCU employed to help pressure the Utes. But Utah found the open man and hit enough consistent shots to keep the Horned Frogs honest on defense.
But that effort wasn’t good enough for TCU head coach Jamie Dixon, who blamed his team’s defensive effort and a lack of rebounding for the loss. Utah outrebounded TCU 40-31 and got 12 second-chance points as a result.
“It wasn’t good enough. … We had breakdowns, and we know what they are and were things we’ve addressed before,” Dixon said. “It wasn’t new breakdowns, it was the same breakdowns.”
Despite a double-digit deficit, TCU erased the Utah lead and tied up the game three separate times in the second half, with the last coming with 8:17 left to play.
Utah stayed composed, though, and never allowed TCU to take a lead, largely behind Brown’s scoring effort. It remained a one- or two-possession game down the stretch, but the Utes withstood the late push.
“I think earlier in the year we might have lost that game,” Utah forward Keanu Dawes said. “I think we did a good job of staying together, especially towards the end, instead of them come back and end up beating us.”
The Utes controlled a 6-point lead with 54 seconds left to play, leaving the Horned Frogs with the only option to play the foul game in an effort to cut into the lead despite finishing the game making 13 of the team’s last 14 shots and Utah failing to make a field goal over the last 2:47.
But Utah made enough free throws to hold onto the lead.
In all, Utah had four players finish in double figures in the win, with Don McHenry adding 12 points and four assists, and Keanu Dawes posting a double-double of 10 points and 14 rebounds.
David Punch led TCU in scoring with 22 points on 10-of-16 shooting and six rebounds, while Micah Robinson added 14 points, five assists and four rebounds in the loss.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
