Just a quick update (finally, right?) to let readers know that with a switch in coverage plans for the upcoming season, our Utah Utes basketball blog soon will be wrapped into one that also covers the football team.

My colleague Lya Wodraska will handle that, as she will be taking over coverage of the basketball team while I prepare for and cover the 2010 Vancouver Olympics in Canada. The switch will allow uninterrupted coverage of the Utes from the first jump ball to the final whistle, and put all of our information on the most popular Utes sports in one place.

The current basketball blog will be redirected to Wodraska's existing blog at http://blogs.sltrib.com/utes sometime in the next week, so you might be keen to make the adjustment in your bookmarks.

Meanwhile, and we apologize for being a little late to the party, but the Utes have picked up an oral commitment from J.J. O'Brien, a 6-foot-6 small forward from Alta Loma, Calif., who visited campus earlier this month and chose the Utes over Creighton and San Diego State. He's the second commitment the Utes have received for the 2010 recruiting class, after Missouri's Preston Guiot — son of the Southwest Baptist coach who so notoriously beat the Utes to open the season nearly two years ago — earlier this summer, leaving coach Jim Boylen with one expected scholarship opening for that recruiting class.

The Utes open practices Oct. 16 — barely a month away!

Unfortunate news for coach Jim Boylen and the Utes tonight … looks like Alex Dragicevich has decided to go elsewhere.

The 6-foot-6 shooting guard from Glenbrook North High School in suburban Chicago has committed to Notre Dame.

“I just really like how they use their guards,” Dragicevich said. “There’s a lot of freedom on the perimeter. I think it’s a free-wheeling offense. They shoot a lot of threes. The guards are allowed to handle the ball. It works for all areas of my game. They didn’t recruit me just to be a shooter.”

Sadly, some other commitments kept me from attending the Utes' elite camp last night, where about 30 top players joined the current and incoming Utes — all of them are back on campus, except point guard Luka Drca — in a workout and competition at the Huntsman Center.

Word is that everything went well, though coaches are not allowed to comment on prospective recruits unless and until they sign letters of intent.

Top point guard Stephen Holt of Jesuit High School in Portland was among the attendees and enjoying ever more recruiting attention, though Provo's Kyle Collinsworth was not. The Utes have effectively stopped recruiting Collinsworth, after he made it clear recently that they were not among his top choices.

Incidentally, another Utah target — Alex Dragecevich of Glenbrook North High School in Illinois — had surgery the other day on an injured finger on his non-shooting hand that will keep him out of several camps over the next few weeks. Media reports indicate he expects to be full strength by the end of July, though.

He might have gone undrafted, but that doesn't mean Luke Nevill isn't going to get his chance.

The 7-foot-2 center is expected to play for the New Orleans Hornets at the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, where 21 teams will compete from July 10-19 at the Thomas & Mack Center. That means that not only will Nevill have a chance to impress the Hornets, but also any of the other teams that will be watching the action.

Incidentally, the Hornets used the 21st pick of the draft on UCLA's Darren Collison, and traded second-round picks for LSU's Marcus Thornton. Both are guards, meaning the Hornets probably could still use somebody to step up and challenge the unspectacular group of big men who back up starting center Tyson Chandler.

Check out most of the online mock drafts that are floating around out there, and you'd conclude that center Luke Nevill is not going to hear his name called during the NBA Draft next week.

His agent, however, thinks otherwise.

“I would be surprised if he wasn't drafted,” agent Keith Glass said.

While Nevill said he's pretty confident about being a second-round pick — he has worked out for nine teams already, with the Jazz on tap over the weekend — Glass said the draft is too uncertain a proposition to attempt to predict, and that it doesn't matter that much, anyway.

“You can't tell,” he said. “You really can't. You'd have to be inside of the mind of every team in the league in order to really know. I represented Mark Eaton for his whole career, and Mark was the 74th pick in the draft, I think. In other words, he wouldn't have been drafted next week. And I believe his jersey is hanging there somewhere. So to me, the draft is a game and a show. The league has … tried to make it much more important than it really is. So I'm more concerned about [Nevill's] career, which I really feel good about.”

Coach Jim Boylen was clearly upset at hearing the news from an assistant coach that counterpart Dave Rose of Brigham Young has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The Cougars announced in a statement that the cancer was discovered by tests Rose had performed when he underwent emergency surgery to remove his spleen and part of his pancreas at a hospital in Las Vegas last week. He's home now, but has been enduring further tests at the Huntsman Cancer Institute just up the hill from the U. campus.

“The biggest thing is I'm shocked and I'm disappointed," Boylen said. "This goes way beyond basketball and the rivalry. It's about a man that I respect and compete against at the highest level. ... It's tough."

Boylen said he had been leaving Rose voice-mail messages since Rose checked into the hospital, teasing him about the lengths to which he would go to avoid summer camps and recruiting. Boylen said the two "have a bond, believe it or not" that has grown out of their shared goal to "make young men into men within this rivalry."

“We wish him the best," Boylen added. "We'll be praying for him down here, my family. And we're expecting him to recover. I know he's a fighter, he's a tough guy, and I'm expecting him to be coaching his team in the fall.”

We're well into the offseason, yet coach Jim Boylen's name just keeps popping up on the periphery of one of the nation's most high-profile coaching searches.

Given his pro experience, though, it's no wonder that Boylen keeps getting mentioned as a possible candidate for the USC job, especially since the Trojans evidently are searching for somebody with that on his resume. Boylen was a longtime assistant coach in the NBA, mostly with the legendary Rudy Tomjanovich and the Houston Rockets.

And according to ESPN's Andy Katz, Boylen is among the coaches on whom the Trojans are performing background checks, in case they want to pursue him.

While coach Jim Boylen has been busy with his summer camps and analyzing the NBA Finals for us, his players have been working out on their own — with two notable additions.

Incoming recruits Matt Read and Marshall Henderson both have paid their own way to enroll in summer school and get a jump start on their careers with the Utes. Both look good, as far as Boylen can tell in his office — coaches aren't allowed to watch their players work out in the summertime — and have been playing with other members of the team.

Henderson, you'll recall, was one of the top prep scorers in Texas for L.D. Bell High School last season, and possesses a deadly outside shot. Read, meanwhile, is a 6-9 forward who played at Collin County Community College in Texas last season, whom Boylen regards as the kind of player who might not score a ton, but who does all the hard work required to win games.

The rest of the incoming recruits are expected to join the Utes at the start of the fall semester.