Looks like the Utes will take the floor for their first exhibition game against Montana Tech on Thursday with the starting lineup they would prefer to use most of the time.

Coach Jim Boylen confirmed today that Tyler Kepkay will start at point guard, with Lawrence Borha at shooting guard, Stephen Weigh at small forward, Shaun Green at power forward and Luke Nevill at center. And rather than plan to use his entire roster to assess all of his players -- though he figures to get the chance, anyway, against an NAIA opponent -- Boylen said he expects to use his players the way he normally would in a regular-season game.

"We're going to try to have a rotation," he said.

The only player who won't be available is backup guard Curtis Eatmon, who is still out with a lingering groin injury and scheduled to see a specialist about it. Forward Kim Tillie suffered a minor ankle injury in practice, Boylen said, but he's still expected to play in the exhibition.

It was yet another reminder of how far in advance -- years, really -- the college basketball recruiting process really begins.

A high school freshman visiting the Utes.

Box Elder's Brant Mecham and his father stopped by practice the other day, evidently part of a series of unofficial visits to several schools to get a sense of the programs and how they do things. Coach Jim Boylen spoke with Mecham and introduced the 6-foot-5 guard to the current Utes after the workout, but he's not allowed to comment on potential recruits.

In any case, Mecham is only entering his freshman season, but already he has been tabbed as one of the state's top prospects in the 2011 recruiting class, along with shooting guard Corbin Miller of Brighton. Both were rated among the top freshmen at the Adidas Phenom 150 summer camp in San Diego, with Miller also rated 34th on Hoop Scoop's recent list of the top 500 freshmen in the country.

It will be interesting to see how such young players develop, and whether the Utes keep up a recruitment of Mecham as the years go by.

Probably it was the day of rest they enjoyed after their scrimmage over the weekend that helped, but the Utes looked as sharp in practice today as I've seen them.

Especially Luke Nevill.

The 7-foot-1 center was aggressive, energetic and dominant -- and fired up enough to loudly challenge the coaching staff about its criticism of his technique, at one point. Everybody else seemed to have good energy, too, and even coach Jim Boylen was more complimentary than critical, with just three days before the exhibition opener against Montana Tech.

"We're getting a little excited," Boylen said. "We've had some good team meetings, we've had some good interaction with our team. I think we're starting to care about each other, care about winning more than ourselves, and those are good things. But it does take time."

The only downside was that backup guard Curtis Eatmon is going to be out awhile with his lingering groin injury. Boylen said the sophomore could be out another 7 to 10 days "at least" -- that puts him in jeopardy of missing the regular-season opener against South Carolina Upstate at the Huntsman Center on Nov. 9 -- though he didn't want to talk much about it, past that.

"I'm worried about it," Boylen said. "We need Curtis' athleticism and he's a terrific kid. So I'm bummed out about it."

Eatmon, for his part, has been attending practice and receiving medical treatment, but walking very gingerly. He saw another doctor about his injury, and said he expects to have an MRI exam performed on it soon.

On the other hand, Nevill said his injured knee is getting better. In fact, it's not really even the knee that's bothering him, but rather the tendon that attaches his hamstring into the back of his knee. He sat out small portions of practice riding a stationary bicycle to stay warm, but otherwise was clearly full speed.

Easily the most interesting part of the Utes' scrimmage last night was hearing coach Jim Boylen say afterward that starting spots were still "up for grabs."

Specifically, Boylen said that guard Lawrence Borha and forward Shaun Green might be playing their way out of their projected starting roles. Neither one made a huge impact during the scrimmage, and neither has been impressing Boylen in recent days.

Most damagingly, perhaps, Borha endured a heated confrontation with Boylen at practice on Friday in which Boylen berated and threatened Borha for being lazy, selfish and undisciplined. That came after Borha nearly got into a fight with teammate Sayre Brennan, when Brennan -- a walk-on until just a couple of weeks ago -- chastised and pushed him for missing a lay-up during a full-court drill. Boylen later praised Brennan for sticking up for the team and demanding Borha perform better.

"We have to go through those kinds of days," Boylen said. "We're just going through some family growing things, and that's OK."

The Utes would prefer to start Borha at shooting guard because Boylen has said he's their best perimeter defender -- as recently as last week, Boylen was consistently praising Borha for working hard and "getting it" -- and because that would allow them to bring guard Johnnie Bryant off the bench for Borha or point guard Tyler Kepkay. (Boylen believes Bryant will perform better in that role than as a starter.)

Ideally, they also would start Green at power forward so forward Kim Tillie could back up both Green and center Luke Nevill. Otherwise, the potential rotation and substitutions get complicated and probably compromised -- with little depth in the frontcourt.

But Boylen said that Tillie probably has outplayed Green so far, and that he needs to maintain "credibility in the locker room" by rewarding the players who perform the best and work the hardest.

"I would prefer to have a consistent lineup," Boylen said, "but that's about what they do on the floor."

The Utes still have several days before their exhibition opener against Montana Tech, and nearly two weeks before their regular-season opener against South Carolina-Upstate on Nov. 9 at the Huntsman Center. Boylen said a lot can happen between now and then.

Looks like the extra rest helped center Luke Nevill.

The 7-foot-1 junior center played in the Utes' scrimmage on Saturday, after all, despite missing practice a day earlier to rest a sore knee. But he hardly dominated. Nevill scored eight points and grabbed six rebounds in a 47-32 loss to a team of reserves in the main 20-minute game at the Huntsman Center, missing four of six shots inside and seeming to have a harder time than he should against smaller defenders Kim Tillie and Morgan Grim.

"He wasn't going to play," coach Jim Boylen said, "but he came up to me before the scrimmage and said he wanted to go."

Guards Johnnie Bryant and Carlon Brown, forwards Luka Drca, Tillie and Grim led the victorious White team -- Bryant was 8-for-9 shooting, hit a three-pointer from the corner just before the final horn and scored 21 points -- with forward Sayre Brennan and walk-on guard Tre Smith coming off the bench.

Guard Lawrence Borha led the Red team of projected starters with 11 points and three rebounds, but did not play particularly well. Boylen said Borha could be "playing his way out" of a starting spot, along with forward Shaun Green.

"We had some guys play really well, but I still believe we're struggling to become a team," Boylen said. "We need to trust each other more."

The Utes played two subsequent halves after mixing up the teams, but frequently looked lethargic and drew criticism for their coach for committing too many turnovers. (The press-break situations after the main scrimmage were stunningly disastrous, until Boylen yanked several starters off the press-breaking team.) Green, in particular, seemed uninvolved. At one point, Boylen told Green he would bench him, if only the coach had anybody to take Green's place.

While Nevill was able to play in the main part of the scrimmage, guard Curtis Eatmon was not so lucky. The backup guard did not play because of his lingering groin injury, which he said could be worse than originally feared. (He's seeing a doctor about it Monday.) And once the Utes started switching up the teams and scrimmaging some more to experiment with different lineups against different defenses, Nevill left the floor to stretch, get treatment on his knee, and ride a stationary bicycle.

"We're making strides," Boylen said, "but we have to get better."

Boylen allowed that the team is exhausted from all of the conditioning it has been doing -- the players worked out in the morning before the scrimmage, too -- and that some players like guard Tyler Kepkay have their "heads spinning" while trying to adapt to the new system.

The Red team, by the way, included potential starting guards Tyler Kepkay and Borha, forwards Stephen Weigh (who couldn't buy a basket, it seemed) and Green and Nevill, with guard Chris Grant and walk-on forward Jonathan Downie off the bench.

My apologies, but I forgot to update the blog last night with the news of center Luke Nevill's knee injury.

Turns out, the 7-foot-1 center had been playing with pain for about three days, after having banged knees in practice and developed a touch of tendinitis in his right knee that could keep him out of the team's open scrimmage today at the Huntsman Center.

Coach Jim Boylen does not think the injury is serious -- "nothing is structurally wrong," he said -- and planned to judge Nevill's ability to play in the scrimmage on an early practice this morning and a workout just before the scrimmage. (Our newspaper article should have said Nevill is "questionable" to play, but an editing mix-up resulted in the article saying he "likely won't play.")

The team had the day off Thursday, but Nevill also sat out practice Friday in order to get some extra rest. Instead of playing basketball, he worked out in a swimming pool -- with Boylen joining him in the water for the workout.

If you believe that coaches know a lot more about basketball than writers do -- and who doesn't? -- then you'll be pretty interested in the preseason USA Today/ESPN Top 25 coaches poll.

That's because the Utes -- the same Utes who won only 11 games a year ago and never came within two time zones of a top 25 poll -- received four points in the balloting, eight less than rival Brigham Young and two more than Utah State.

Coach Jim Boylen's response?

"Interesting," he said.

Interesting, indeed.

Trying to figure out just how the Utes accumulated those votes, and which coaches might have voted for them, is the fun part. Since teams get 25 points for a first-place vote and 1 point for a 25th-place vote, the Utes could have received four 25th-place votes, one 22nd-place vote, or some combination.

The most likely coach to have voted for them, in my opinion, is San Diego State's Steve Fisher, who talked them up quite a lot during the Mountain West Conference annual preseason meetings in Denver last week. And just so you know, Boylen's former boss -- Michigan State's Tom Izzo -- is not among the 31 coaches who vote in the poll.

By the way, the Utes are scheduled to play two teams that are ranked in the preseason poll. Oregon is ranked No. 13, while Gonzaga is ranked in a tie for 14th place with Texas A&M. Predictably, no Mountain West teams made the top 25.

Coach Jim Boylen announced that the Utes will hold an open scrimmage at the Huntsman Center on Saturday, as they prepare for their first exhibition game next week.

The scrimmage will start at 5 p.m. and last about an hour, the Utes said. Admission is free. And with the Utes having scrimmaged for only a few minutes during their first open practice of the season two weeks ago, this will be the first chance of the season for fans to see a serious workout.

The Utes play their first exhibition game against Montana Tech on Thursday, with the second against Northwest Nazarene on Nov. 6 and the season opener against South Carolina Upstate on Nov. 9.

The Utes play their first exhibition game against Montana Tech one week from tonight, but already a few things are starting to come clear about coach Jim Boylen's lineup plans.

It's not exactly a tough guess, considering which players are returning from last year, but the starting lineup figures to include junor Tyler Kepkay at point guard, junior Lawrence Borha at shooting guard, sophomore Stephen Weigh at small forward, junior Shaun Green at power forward and junior Luke Nevill at center.

Guard Johnnie Bryant probably will be coming off the bench for his senior season, along with sophomore swingman Luka Drca and sophomore forward Kim Tillie in the other most prominent roles.

Drca, in fact, could be particularly useful.

Boylen said he can envision using the 6-foot-5 Serbian as the point guard alongside Kepkay and Bryant in a lineup aimed at breaking full-court pressure. All three are adept ball-handlers, Boylen said, and have the kind of offensive talent that could make an opponent pay for trying to press the Utes.

Only problem?

Defense.

Though he would like to use Bryant and Kepkay together at times, he has not been impressed so far with what happens to the Utes' perimeter defense when Borha leaves the lineup. The coach also is concerned about injuries in the frontcourt, considering that Tillie is really the only experienced backup for both Nevill and Green. If one of those guys goes down, suddenly freshman Morgan Grim is being asked to make a major contribution, just a few months removed from his senior prom at Riverton High School.

On the bright side, though, Grim has been impressive in preseason workouts, even if the coaching staff is trying desperately to get him to gain weight. And Tillie? He's only 6-9, but every time I see him going against the 7-1 Nevill, he's overpowering or outmaneuvering the center in the low post. To my eye, he's easily the toughest post player on the team.

The Utes announced today the tip-off times for the only two games on their schedule whose start times we did not yet know. Both the game against Oregon on Dec. 8 in Portland and the game against Cal on Dec. 22 in Berkeley will start at 4 p.m. Mountain time.

Neither is scheduled to be broadcast on television, however.

Now, the only game for which we don't know the start time comes in the second round of the NIT Season Tip-Off Tournament, presumably against Washington in Seattle on Nov. 14. The Utes will have to beat High Point the previous day in Seattle to advance that far, while the Huskies play New Jersey Institute of Technology in the first round.

Looks like things aren't getting any easier for the Utes on the injury front.

Not only does guard Curtis Eatmon continue to sit out practice with a groin injury, but now fellow guard Carlon Brown and forward Sayre Brennan have been sidelined with ankle injuries. Brown suffered his injury on Sunday and has been wearing a walking boot, while Brennan was hurt near the end of practice today.

Coach Jim Boylen doesn't believe any of the injuries are especially serious -- forward Stephen Weigh has been playing with a rib injury, too -- but they are problematic for a couple of reasons. The Utes might be forced to practice with only 11 players the next couple of days, for one thing, and the injuries are coming at time when the Utes are still installing their offense and doing the most teaching of their new system.

"When you miss this time of the year -- foundation, conditioning, the system, teaching it like we're doing -- it's just hard to get that back," Boylen said. "When you start playing games, you don't have that time. That's why it bothers me. ... You miss five days this time of year? That's like missing 15 in January or February."

On the bright side, Boylen is hopeful that Eatmon and Brown, at least, can return to practice by Friday. And forward Shaun Green has returned to practice after missing a couple of days with a strained muscle in his leg, and has enjoyed "his best three days of practice" so far.

Didn't get a chance to run up to practice today, but did get a report that wasn't especially heartening.

Forward Shaun Green has missed the last two workouts with a strained muscle in his leg, and guard Curtis Eatmon suffered a groin injury today. Both are expected to be able to practice at least in the second of two workouts on Saturday, though, so it doesn't look as if either injury is serious.

One of the more interesting things I learned at the Mountain West Conference's annual preseason meeting -- aside from the facts that Air Force's Jeff Reynolds used to run marathons and UNLV's Lon Kruger has learned to eat smaller meals to accompany his medication after six-bypass heart surgery in the offseason -- is why coach Jim Boylen passed on bringing power forward Nemanja Calasan into his program.

It's a question I'd been meaning to ask Boylen for some time, but kept forgetting. After all, Calasan was considered a pivotal player on the Midland College team in Texas that won the national junior-college championship last season, and I couldn't figure out exactly what about his game "didn't fit" with the Utes.

Now, we have an answer.

Boylen said the decision to release Calasan from the letter of intent he signed was not based on the player or his talent. In fact, Calasan "would have helped us win" this season.

But adding him also would have given the Utes five players scheduled to graduate in 2009 -- including guards Lawrence Borha and Tyler Kepkay, forward Shaun Green and center Luke Nevill -- and Boylen did not feel as if he could risk such a massive turnover in what will be his third year on the job.

"It just didn't sit well with me," he said.

So Boylen allowed Calasan to wind up at Purdue, where he's expected to play a role for coach Matt Painter and the Boilermakers, who finished 22-10 last season. That decision, and the one to drop forward Daniel Deane from the team during the offseason, are "outward statements of an inward commitment to build this thing the right way," Boylen said.

In other words?

Boylen envisions himself rebuilding the program and sticking around for awhile, rather than patching it together briefly so he can move on again. "I felt in my heart that wasn't what I signed on for," he said.

And now we know.

By the time we had a chance to talk to Luke Nevill and Johnnie Bryant at the annual Mountain West Conference preseason meeting, they were both obviously gassed from a day full of other interviews.

But both said they were encouraged by being picked to finish third.

"I think there's a buzz out there for us," Bryant said. "But it really doesn't matter. It's all about production when we take the floor."

While Nevill and Bryant sat through their final interview session virtually asleep in their chairs, coach Jim Boylen seemed energized while socializing with UNLV's Lon Kruger, whom he knows from their days in the NBA.

Boylen acknowledged feeling uncomfortable during his television interviews -- he could never get a feel for when the host would ask him a question, he said -- but said he enjoyed getting to know the other first-year coaches whom he hadn't yet met. He also had the best response to learning the Utes had been picked third: "We're thankful to be picked third, but going to do our best to finish first," Boylen said.

Otherwise, though, it was a pretty uneventful day.

Nobody made any startling predictions, and it was hard to find many strong opinions on what might happen in the league this season, what with all of the new players and coaches.

Bryant did say, at any rate, that if he had been allowed to vote in the preseason poll, he might have gone with the New Mexico Lobos. The Lobos received two first-place votes among the 22 cast in the preseason poll, just like the Utes.

"They have some real tough players who have been around," Bryant said.

Quick update, now that the preseason polls have been released.

Frankly, I'm surprised the BYU Cougars were such an overwhelming favorite to win the league. Not that the Cougs are an indefensible choice; far from it. But I thought the first-place votes would be more widely distributed -- perhaps to even more than five teams -- than they were in reality.

Five teams received first-place votes, but the Cougars received 15 of the 22 that were cast. The Utes received two -- that surprised me, too, quite frankly -- and were picked to finish third, higher than the fourth or fifth that I expected.

All of that just goes to show that either I'm right about this being an especially unpredictable season, what with five new coaches and so many top players having departed, or that I have no idea what I'm talking about. We'll see what the Utes have to say about it here in a little while.

Just ran into coaches Jim Boylen and Elaine Elliott in the lobby of the hotel here near Denver, so obviously the Utes have made it to the annual preseason basketball meetings without any trouble.

Center Luke Nevill and guard Johnnie Bryant are joining Boylen at the event, which begins this afternoon at the nearby studios of The Mtn. television network. There, the league will release its preseason poll and all-conference teams, and facilitate interviews with all of its coaches and top players.

My guess?

The Utes will be picked fourth or fifth, and Nevill will make the men's all-league team. But we'll see, and we'll keep you posted on the day's developments here and on our main web site. So keep checking back!

With the unveiling of the Mountain West Conference's preseason poll just a day away, here's an update on a few of the things happening around the league.

The San Diego State Aztecs, for example, are hoping to find a way to cope without departed star guard Brandon Heath. Defending champion UNLV has learned that its 7-foot freshman center from Cameroon can receive a scholarship but must redshirt, in a dispute over the validity of some of his academic records.

Meanwhile, heralded new coach Steve Alford apparently has brought a renewed chemistry to New Mexico, even though the Lobos will be without injured senior forward Tony Dandrige for months.

And the CSU Rams?

They enjoyed probably their best day of the season when they opened practice last week, considering new coach Tim Miles has only one returning starter and a terribly depleted roster.

Bank on them to finish last in that preseason poll.

Chris Grant is a 23-year-old senior, recently married, and one of the most experienced veterans for the Utes. But even he can still learn some valuable lessons.

Like how to eat.

Grant nearly ran himself into an emergency room during a preseason practice recently, because he was trying to keep up with coach Jim Boylen's demanding regimen while at the same dieting drastically in an attempt to lose some weight and body fat.

"I literally felt like I was running cross-eyed," Grant recalled. "I couldn't see."

Grant had to back out of practice that day a couple of weeks ago, and spent the rest of the workout hunched over a garbage can and slumped in a chair on the sideline. It took hours to feel better again, he said, and the trainers concluded his attempt at ill-advised approach to dieting left him without nearly enough energy to handle the hard workout.

"I've never had an experience like that before," he said.

So while Grant has dropped a few pounds and body-fat percentage points, he's no longer aiming for massive weight loss through what essentially was a starvation diet. He acknowledged he "probably took it a little too seriously" when Boylen told him he needed to lose some weight, and now he's hoping to simply healthily maintain his current weight.

"I just said, 'Screw it. I'm going to eat,'" Grant said. "I'll eat healthy food, but I'm just going to eat, and if need be, I'll work out more. ... I was working out more and eating even less."

And as he discovered, that's not a good combination.

Since the Utes held their "Friday Night Hoops" season kickoff event far too late for us to get anything but a good photo in the newspaper in the morning -- and since it's just an abbreviated, co-ed practice with music, anyway -- we'll be covering the high points here, just to start the season off right.

So ... first things first.

The new scoreboard looks terrific -- it's just too bad it wasn't working yet. The Utes finished installing it just in time for coach Jim Boylen to unveil his team alongside the women's team, but the giant video screens clearly are not quite ready yet.

But Chris Grant is ready.

Interviewed at midcourt by women’s coach Elaine Elliott, the senior guard said the team's goal is to win the Mountain West Conference and reach the NCAA Tournament.

"We have to go to the tournament, hands down," he said.

Fellow senior Johnnie Bryant agreed, telling the couple thousand fans in attendance that "we're going to be cutting down the nets at the end of the year for you guys." That would be quite an accomplishment, considering the Utes were 11-19 last season.

Once the competition began, the Utes held a three-point shooting contest between Bryant and forwards Stephen Weigh and Shaun Green.

Bryant made 21 of 25 shots from five spots around the arc, but Weigh won the men's side of the event with 24 points, benefiting from extra points being awarded for making the final shot at each of the shooting locations. Green brought up the rear, burdened by an unsightly 0-for-5 from the right angle.

After that, the men held a short scrimmage -- two five-minute halves, with mostly running clock -- in which center Luke Nevill had six points and two rebounds, though freshman Morgan Grim stripped him of a rebound in the second half. Green had a strong performance, too, including a three-pointer just before the final buzzer, and guard Lawrence Borha heated up with back-to-back jumpers at the end of the first half, once freshman Carlon Brown had beaten him for a reverse lay-up.

"I don't know if the defense was really good or the offense was really bad," Boylen said.

Speaking of Brown, he seemed to be in the middle of the action quite a bit, though he missed a couple of wild shots pretty badly. He also just lost the dunk contest -- judged in part by former defensive end Luther Elliss -- to guard Curtis Eatmon, who threw down a dazzling 360-degree windmill number on his final attempt.

Among the other noteworthy items, Eatmon played the whole scrimmage either at shooting guard or small forward -- not point guard -- guard Luka Drca scored right off the opening tip and later stripped Nevill in the post in his first action after offseason shoulder surgery, and junior-college transfer Tyler Kepkay missed both shots he attempted after averaging 27.9 points per game at the College of Eastern Utah last season.

The only downside to the night?

The most agonizing introductions in basketball history.

Sure, it was a cool idea to introduce each player in a spotlight at the top of the darkened arena and have them jog down the steps to the floor amid cheers and high-fives. But by waiting for each player to reach the floor before introducing the next player, the process took seemingly forever. And frankly, I was worried that in the bad lighting, somebody was going to take a header and suffer a season-ending injury.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen -- though Brown did hit the floor.

The freshman already has a reputation as something of a showboat from high school, and he lived up to it by dancing his way down the steps and then doing “the worm” along the hardwood.

With that kind of start, it should be an interesting season.

When asked the other day who he thought would be the biggest surprise of the upcoming season for the Utes, junior forward Shaun Green didn't even hesitate.

"This guy," he said, jerking a thumb toward junior guard Lawrence Borha, seated next to him.

Why?

"When he plays with a lot of confidence, he's hard to stop," Green said.

And if there's one thing that Borha has going for him at the moment, it's confidence. That might seem strange, considering how hard and how often new coach Jim Boylen has chewed on him during the few practices the Utes have been allowed since school began. But Borha said he feels that the new staff has a lot more faith in him than the old one did.

"Yes, definitely," Borha said. "Definitely. They have confidence in me, and I just feel like when I go out and play, it's not just him getting on me for no reason at all. When he gets on me, it just builds me up to do better.

"Last year, you would mess up, and it would be like, 'You messed up. Oh, you suck and get on the bench and you won’t play,'" he said. "This year it's, 'You suck, now you go out there and you do it better!' You know? That makes a big difference."

And Boylen has noticed.

Though he's always careful to say that Borha still has a long way to go, Boylen has singled out the 6-foot-3 shooting guard probably more than any other player in recent weeks. Boylen says Borha is "getting it" and playing hard, and seems poised to carve out more playing time for himself.

Oh, and by the way, Borha offered the best description I've yet heard for the voluminous new playbook the Utes are using this season -- after pretty much running the same six or seven plays over and over again last season.

"We have a football playbook this year," he said. "And last year, we had probably one page."

Since the Utes open their preseason practice in only a matter of hours, perhaps it's time to provide a full run-down of the roster -- especially since a couple of out-of-town readers requested one, to help them keep up.

To wit, then:

Though coach Jim Boylen doesn't like to guarantee spots to anybody, the starting lineup is likely to include junior Tyler Kepkay and senior Johnnie Bryant at guard -- Kepkay will play the point, primarily, though both can handle it -- sophomore Stephen Weigh and junior Shaun Green at forward and junior Luke Nevill at center.

All except Kepkay played for the Utes last season, with Bryant, Green and Nevill starting almost all of the games. Weigh made 11 starts, while Kepkay joins the team after having been a first-team junior-college All-American and leading the nation in scoring at the College of Eastern Utah last season.

The top reserves figure to include junior guard Lawrence Borha -- more on his re-emergence later -- sophomore guard Luca Drca and sophomore forward Kim Tillie. Senior guard Chris Grant and sophomore guard Curtis Eatmon might have a hard time scraping up much playing time behind the front-line backcourt, while guard Carlon Brown and forward Morgan Grim are incoming freshmen who probably are going to have to work their way up for awhile.

Senior forward Sayre Brennan is a former walk-on who just received a scholarship but probably won't play much, along with sophomore forward Jonathan Downie and freshman guard Tre Smith -- both walk-ons who won invitations to the team after an open tryout.

So, everybody ready, now? The season starts tonight.

One of the most interesting things that came out of talking to the players during their informal media day -- aside from learning that usually soft-spoken junior-college transfer guard Tyler Kepkay apparently refers to himself as the "6-foot LeBron" around his teammates -- was that senior Johnnie Bryant hardly views himself as a shooting guard.

That seems to have long been the prevailing presumption, that Bryant is better suited or more naturally a "two," which theoretically is one of the reasons the Utes so badly needed to bring in a "true" experienced point guard like Kepkay.

But Bryant disputed that notion.

"I've been playing point guard all my life," he said, "so I'm used to playing that position. To be honest, it's pretty much everybody outside the basketball program that says I need to play the 'two,' because I can shoot the basketball. But you look at guys in the NBA. Steve Nash can shoot the ball. Chauncey Billups can shoot the ball. So just because a guy can shoot the ball doesn't mean he’s necessarily a 'two.' I've always just thought of myself as a basketball player."

Certainly, Bryant can shoot.

He shot 42.3 percent from three-point range last season -- second on the team behind forward Shaun Green, who shot 51.2 percent on 125 shots, compared to the 208 that Bryant took. But Bryant shot a more modest 43.6 percent overall, which he believes was a product of opposing defenses being able to focus on him as the only serious backcourt scoring threat.

"What teams did last year was try to run me down in the backcourt so I wouldn't be much of a scoring threat," Bryant said. So Kepkay "is really going to take the pressure off of me."

Coach Jim Boylen agreed that while Kepkay figures to be the primary point guard, both he and Bryant are practically interchangeable in the backcourt. Both will see time playing both the point and shooting guard positions, he said.

"What I like is guys who can bring it up and handle it, and then give it up, come back and get it and do something," Boylen said. "That's kind of how we used Drew Neitzel at Michigan State. He was big enough and could bring it up and handle it, get rid of it, and then all of the sudden he's coming off and doing things with it."

Just back from the Utes' informal "media day" with coaches and players up at the Huntsman Center, where the team officially unveiled plans for their celebration of 100 years of basketball.

The biggest part of the celebration will be the announcement of an All-Century Team at the game against San Diego State on Feb. 16.

The top 15 players ever to play at Utah will comprise the team, and some of them -- such as Andrew Bogut and Keith Van Horn -- are expected to attend the ceremony. Fans will vote for members of the team, starting Friday at www.UtahUtes.com and in other ways during the season.

The Utes also have compiled a list of the 100 greatest moments in their basketball history, which they will unveil on their web site. The top 16 moments will be featured during each home game this season, counting down to the No. 1 moment in school basketball history -- presumably at the home finale against Colorado State on March 4.

The Utes also will wear commemorative patches on their uniforms this season, and hang banners featuring some of their greatest players at the entrances to the Huntsman Center. A new logo will grace various surfaces of the arena, too, including the court.

Of course, there was plenty more from the players and coaches, which I'll roll out in subsequent posts and articles in the newspaper.

Having alluded to it in the previous post, I probably should elaborate on the disastrous offseason the Colorado State Rams have endured.

In just one paragraph of a recent article about new coach Tim Miles' hunt for walk-on players in an open tryout, the Coloradoan newspaper in Fort Collins summed it all up:

The Rams lost three players and two junior-college signees to other programs after they fired former coach Dale Layer. Center Jason Smith left early for the NBA. One player's scholarship was not renewed, while an incoming recruit did not qualify academically. Another signee was not offered a scholarship after being charged with felony identity theft, and forward Xavier Kilby was thrown off the team after police said he pointed a gun at a teammate's head during an argument.

Other than that, the Rams seemed to really make some strides.

Talk about a crapshoot.

Just finished trying to predict the order of finish in the Mountain West Conference, for the league's annual preseason poll. And let me say, what a nightmare! Five new coaches, tons of high-profile departures, and as usual, not a clue about how any of the potential newcomers around the league are really going to fit in when the ball goes in the air.

If the exercise taught me anything, it's that the upcoming season should be pretty intriguing -- since there's so little to depend upon.

Anyway, just so you know, I picked the Utes to finish third behind UNLV and San Diego State. Yes, both the Rebels and Aztecs lose some important players -- UNLV's Kevin Kruger and Wendell White and San Diego State's Brandon Heath, among them -- while the Utes have practically everybody back.

But the Utes were not much good to begin with, and are still adjusting to new coach Jim Boylen.

Clearly, picking them third shows that I think Boylen can do a lot with his group right out of the chute, but the other teams are coming off some pretty strong seasons and have the benefit of continuity in their coaching staffs. That makes a huge difference, I think, and my perception of Boylen's capabilities -- despite having never been a head coach -- is a big reason that I gave the Utes the nod over Wyoming and New Mexico, two other teams with new coaches and some decent talent returning.

Must admit, though, I am particularly intrigued by the Cowboys.

In junior Brandon Ewing and senior Brad Jones, they have the two best guards in the league coming back, and new coach Heath Schroyer is the kind of coach who's going to demand that the Cowboys improve their last-in-the-league defense. If I was allowed to pick a dark horse title contender, they would be it.

Alas, that was not part of the preseason poll.

The Brigham Young Cougars, I nearly voted ahead of the Utes, on the strength of returning starters Trent Plaisted and Lee Cummard and the coaching factor with Dave Rose entering his third year. But the Cougs lost almost all of their best players from last season, and I don’t know if they have enough left to seriously contend again. They will be in the mix near the top of the standings, though, which is why I picked them fourth.

After that, I chose New Mexico sixth -- would have been higher, if the good raw talent surrounding heralded new coach Steve Alford wasn’t comprised of knuckleheads like J.R. Giddens -- Air Force seventh, TCU eighth and Colorado State ninth.

Why?

The Falcons lost almost everybody, including their coach -- though the new one (Jeff Reynolds) was the top assistant to the old one (Jeff Bzdelik). TCU still has the same coach and most of the players who led them to a 13-17 season last year, and Colorado State has only two returning players after a disastrous offseason following the hiring of unknown coach Tim Miles.

For your record-keeping, I also put Utah's Luke Nevill on the preseason all-conference team (a senseless endeavor, if ever there was one), along with UNLV's Wink Adams, Wyoming's Brandon Ewing, BYU's Trent Plaisted and San Diego State's Lorrenzo Wade.

But I'm curious ... how would you predict the order of finish this season?

The Utes just announced the details of their annual practice debut on Oct. 12 -- this time dubbed "Friday Night Hoops" at the Huntsman Center.

As described here earlier, the Utes will hold the event in conjunction with the women's team following the women's volleyball game against Brigham Young that night. The "Friday Night Hoops" will begin at 9 p.m., though the doors to the Huntsman Center will open an hour earlier and players will sign autographs on the arena concourse.

Once the players take the court, they will play intrasquad scrimmages and compete in three-point shooting and dunk contests. Admission is free, and the event marks the start of preseason practice -- with only a month until the season opener against South Carolina-Upstate.

Just got word that the Utes have settled on the two walk-ons they plan to add to the roster this season, in addition to the news that coach Jim Boylen has awarded a scholarship to walk-on forward Sayre Brennan.

Brennan will inherit the scholarship that was vacated when forward Daniel Deane was kicked off the team -- the Utes are now using their full complement of 13 scholarships -- while 6-foot-8 sophomore forward Jonathan Downie of Bountiful and 5-9 freshman point guard Tre Smith of Magna will join the team as walk-ons.

Both earned their invitations after participating in an open tryout and several subsequent workouts.

"I said I wanted to take a walk-on from the student body -– from the MUSS -– to add some depth," Boylen said in a statement. "We ended up taking two –- a point guard and a big guy. The tryouts went very well. We had a good number of guys try out and there was a lot of interest in the program."

Downie missed his senior season at Bountiful High with a back injury, but had been a starter as a sophomore. Smith was a second-team all-state selection during his senior year at Cyprus High School.

As for Brennan, Boylen said the senior had earned the scholarship by "taking ownership on and off the floor." Brennan is scheduled to graduate in the spring.

It's easily the most amusing basketball drill I've ever had occasion to witness, this one with the blocking dummies that coach Jim Boylen runs with his Utes.

Blocking dummies?

Did I say, "blocking dummies?"

Yes, I did.

While the players are charged with dribbling the length of the court hard and fast while making juke moves along the way, Boylen has a couple of his team managers stationed at each end, almost under the basket. When each player closes in on the hoop, the nearby manager winds up with one of those big, red blocking pads that football players use ... and wallops the player as he tries to make his lay-up.

It's like watching a game that some kids invented in their basement on a rainy day, but Boylen believes it's going to help the Utes learn how to endure the inevitable blows that come with trying to get to the hoop in a real game.

"We're trying to simulate playing with contact," Boylen said. "We're trying to overcome our fear of playing off-balance and playing through contact" to get to the free-throw line.

Not only is the drill terrifically entertaining to watch, but it gives a concentrated glimpse at who's better at exploding through the contact. Forward Kim Tillie seems to do it pretty well most of the time (especially when Boylen tells him the blocking pad is German), and so do guards Tyler Kepkay and Lawrence Borha. Forward Shaun Green more frequently gets yelled at, from what I've seen, for getting knocked off-balance.

Of course, it sometimes depends on the end of the floor at which you're trying to make your lay-up. One manager who was swinging the blocking pad recently was clearly putting a lot more into it than his colleague at the other end.

"Ain't nobody going to hit you that hard in a game," guard Johnnie Bryant said.

So much the better, as far as Boylen is concerned. Now, about those shoulder pads waiting there on the sideline ...

It's about time for all of those college basketball preview magazines to start hitting the store shelves, and I've found at least one early version online that says the Utes "could be in contention for the MWC title."

The catch?

I'm not sure the writer really knows the league, past reading a few stat sheets.

Which is not to say the Utes cannot contend for the title, just that it's probably worth not getting too worked up over the ratings of a site whose writer admits to sometimes getting the Mountain West confused with the WAC.

Still, the writer rates center Luke Nevill as the second-best player in the league behind Wyoming's Brandon Ewing -- just so you know, Luke, BYU's Trent Plaisted is No. 4 -- and said the Utes can contend if Nevill and guard Johnnie Bryant "can get a bit more help." Which, all in all, is probably a pretty fair assessment.

So the Utes have scored another of the players they view as the best senior high school prospects in the state -- in a the move figures to provide an early barometer of new coach Jim Boylen's ability to "project" the potential of young players.

While the rest of the college basketball world has been salivating over his more heralded teammates, Lone Peak's Josh Sharp orally committed to the Utes after making a recruiting visit over the weekend. He plans to walk-on as a freshman, before departing for two years on an LDS Church mission and presumably earning a scholarship when he gets back for the 2011-12 season.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed -- which provides protection for the Utes, as much as anybody.

If Sharp doesn't turn out to be the kind of player they envision, they won't be under any obligation to commit a scholarship to him down the road. (Leaving a program for two years turns a college athlete into a recruitable player again.)

And judging by how little recruiting attention Sharp was receiving, not many other coaches see the same potential that Boylen evidently does. After all, Sharp was only the sixth-man for the Knights during their Class 5-A championship season last year, averaging 5.8 points and 4.2 rebounds.

That contribution was hardly insignificant, though, and scooping up Sharp probably has at least a little bit to do with trying to lure Lone Peak's Tyler Haws into the program a year from now. Just a junior, Haws already is considered probably the best prospect in the state and is attracting attention from major programs; both the Utes and rival Cougars reportedly have offered scholarships.

But Boylen surely isn't just recruiting guys for the slim possibility that they could help him land another player down the line. He loves Sharp's ability to run all day long, I've been told (coaches cannot comment on recruits until they sign letters of intent), and that he has a good head for the game and doesn't need to be the star or have plays run for him in order to be productive.

And that fits with what Boylen himself has told me, that he doesn't recruit with an eye toward always getting the very best players necessarily, but rather the very best pieces for the puzzle that comprises his team.

So perhaps Sharp is one of those pieces, and maybe the rest of the college basketball world simply hasn't fully realized it yet.

The only fear for the Utes, in that scenario, is that Sharp enjoys such a strong senior season at Lone Peak that other coaches come calling with scholarship offers. But even that possibility doesn't seem all that dangerous. When I saw Sharp while watching the Utes practice last week and asked him about reports that Weber State had shown some interest in him, he nodded his head and said:

"Yeah, but I just really want to come here."

Sharp reinforced that feeling last night, when I asked him specifically if he could imagine changing his mind before letter-of-intent day, if a good scholarship offer came along. "No," he said. "That's why I committed to the Utes."

While we're still waiting on confirmation from Lone Peak's Josh Sharp that he has orally committed to join the Utes as a walk-on next year, as sources have indicated, it might be worth noting that the Utes are getting closer to picking a couple of players from their open tryout to walk-on with them this year.

Coach Jim Boylen said he has whittled the list to four prospects, from the eight who were invited to an individual workout early this morning (the one guy who was late didn't make the cut). Now, the four will participate in a workout with the rest of the team early Wednesday to help Boylen make his decision.

Boylen originally had hoped to find one player from the open tryout last week who could walk-on this season, but now expects to choose two -- a luxury that would give the team 15 players for practices and provide three groups of five for team drills.

"I was encouraged with the talent we had at the tryout," Boylen said. "I didn't expect to have a second workout with the eight guys."

The Utes are still hopeful that A.J. Reilly can recover from the knee injury that ended his season with the football team in time to walk-on later in the season. If that happens, one of the two new walk-ons could be let go. But until then, the two who will join existing walk-on Sayre Brennan will come from the group that will audition again in a couple of days.

By now, the Utes probably have a pretty good idea who's going to be allowed to walk-on to the team this season.

Coach Jim Boylen and his staff were scheduled to hold a 6 a.m. workout this morning for the eight players who emerged as candidates from their open tryout last week, "to see how dedicated they are," according to director of basketball operations Jonathan Dykema.

Presuming they all showed up, the eight candidates will be evaluated again before the coaches decide which of them will join forward Sayre Brennan as walk-ons this season. The Utes open practice in 11 days.