Coach Leo Rautins acknowledged that many people "have no idea" about Tyler Kepkay.

But the head of the Canadian national basketball team might be starting to change that, having named the 21-year-old Utes point guard to the team that will try one last time to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Games next month.

"He has done a great job in this camp," Rautins said after Kepkay won his job in training camp. "He has really come in and he's played well. He has established a real presence at the point guard position. The backup point guard is a critical role."

Sounds like the light has finally gone on for Kepkay, who endured a difficult junior season with the Utes last year, coming up agonizingly short on several potential game-winning plays. Maybe all he needed was a fresh start and a break to absorb the difficult lessons he learned under coach Jim Boylen.

Kepkay made the team "by being a point guard," Boylen said, after speaking with Rautins and Kepkay. "Did it by running the show and distributing the ball and communicating. ... He did it by doing all the things I've been asking him to do since I got here."

"His skill level, his toughness ... he has those things already," Boylen added. "He's trying to become a winning player and a leader, and it sounds like that's what he's done. I'm very happy for him."

While Kepkay was characteristically calm when I spoke with him, his father, Dave, said in an e-mail that Kepkay is "pumped."

"He really likes the players," Dave Kepkay said. "He is over the top with Coach Leo Rautins and his supportive and positive reinforcement demeanor. One of Ty's first calls was to Coach Boylen to give him the news first-hand."

Dave Kepkay also said he was impressed that Boylen called him to extend his congratulations, and anticipated the Team Canada's exhibition game against Team USA in Las Vegas on July 25 -- a game that Boylen and Kepkay's parents all plan to attend.

"Tyler guarding Kobe," Dave Kepkay said, "what a dream ..."

Tyler Kepkay acknowledged that when he started training camp with the Canadian national team recently, he was a long-shot to make the team for its final chance to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Games in China. He was scarcely on anybody's radar.

Not anymore.

The 21-year-old senior made the Team Canada roster today, beating out incumbent Ryan bell for the back-up point guard spot behind Jermaine Anderson -- though he was characteristically calm about it when I reached him in Toronto.

"I feel great about it," he said quietly. "It has sunk in a little, but I guess it will sink in more when I put the jersey on and start playing."

Though he played for his native country's junior development team, Kepkay had never played for its full national team. Yet from the moment training camp began, he impressed coach Leo Rautins and his staff, and just kept doing so as camp progressed.

"Once we started playing and camp got past the first couple of days, I started getting more and more confident," Kepkay said, "and by the end of it, I wasn't as surprised as I would have been at the beginning. But I was still a little bit."

The Canadians will play a series of exhibition games against Lebanon and New Zealand in Canada over the next week, before playing two more against Germany on July 9 and 11 and then the final Olympic qualifying tournament from July 14-20 in Athens, Greece. They must finish in the top three in the 12-team tournament to reach the Olympics.

After that, the Canadians will meet Team USA in an exhibition July 25 in Las Vegas at the conclusion of the Americans' pre-Olympic training camp -- meaning Kepkay soon will be playing against the Jazz's Deron Williams, among others.

Here's the thing, though.

Kepkay might have to root for idol and fellow British Columbia native Steve Nash to stay retired from the national team. Though Nash has indicated he does not plan play to represent Canada at the Beijing Games -- he gave up the national team after signing with the NBA's Phoenix Suns in 2004 -- Rautins has not given up the possibility, saying in May that Nash has "never said no."

And if Nash returns once the Canadians earn a trip to Beijing ... well, you know what that probably would mean for the back-up point guard.

Nonetheless, Kepkay's achievement counts as a great honor, and a wonderful opportunity.

The Canadians figure to have a decent chance at the qualifying tournament, too, with a roster that Rautins believes is as deep as it has ever been. Center Samuel Dalembert of the Philadelphia 76ers and former UNLV forward Joel Anthony of the Miami Heat also were named to the 12-man roster.

Team Canada opens the qualifying tournament with pool-play games against Slovenia and Korea on July 15 and 16. As long as the Canadians avoid last place in their pool, they will advance to the quarterfinals, where they would play either Cameroon, Croatia or Puerto Rico to reach the semifinals.

The Canadians can qualify for the Olympics either by winning a semifinal game -- there will be no tournament championship game -- or by winning the third-place game against the other semifinal loser. Brazil, Greece, Lebanon, Cape Verde, Germany and New Zealand are the other teams in the tournament.

In case you're curious, it turns out the Utes played against six future NBA draft picks last season.

Cal's Ryan Anderson was the most highly regarded -- coach Jim Boylen said he was the most versatile and skilled player his team faced all year -- and taken by the New Jersey Nets with the 21st pick of the NBA Draft last night.

Anderson scored 19 points and grabbed 13 rebounds against the Utes, who beat the Golden Bears 67-65 on forward Shaun Green's miraculous last-second shot at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley.

New Mexico's J.R. Giddens went to the defending champion Boston Celtics with the 30th and final pick of the first round, while Brigham Young's Trent Plaisted slid all the way to Seattle with the 46th pick. The Sonics then traded Plaisted to Detroit, for whom he presumably did not throw up during his workout. After that, Oregon's Malik Hairston went to Phoenix with the 48th pick, Cal's DeVon Hardin went to Seattle with the 50th pick, and Oregon's Maarty Leunen went 54th to Houston.

The Utes went 2-3 in games against teams with future draft picks, beating Cal and New Mexico once but losing to Oregon and twice to the Lobos.

Maybe Tyler Kepkay just needed a break and a fresh start.

Though he struggled in his first season with the Utes, the senior guard evidently has impressed as "the most surprising player" during the Canadian national team's training camp in advance of its final Olympic qualifying tournament next month in Greece.

Writer Jason Thom is blogging about the camp on the team's official web site, and commented a few days ago that Kepkay had been the best passer for the second straight day in camp.

Coach Leo Rautins "will have some tough choices to make come time for the final cut to 12," Thom wrote.

The Canadians have 20 players in camp, according to the roster, including nine guards -- though Steve Nash is not among them.

Kepkay has played well enough to make the battle for the back-up point guard position one of the toughest in camp. That position is arguably the only one on the team still up for grabs. Kepkay is pushing incumbent Ryan Bell of Carleton University in Ottawa for the spot. Bell has played 21 games for the national team; Kepkay has not played any.

"Everybody knows what's on the line and what's at stake right now," Kepkay said. "Everybody's just playing hard trying to get ready."

The Utes unveiled their home schedule today, and it's every bit as enticing as we expected.

Oregon.

Cal.

Gonzaga.

LSU.

Those are just four of the seven non-conference opponents that will visit the Huntsman Center next season, and there's only one slouch among the others -- Southwest Baptist in the season-opener on Nov. 15. The Utes also will play Oklahoma on the road, in a schedule that coach Jim Boylen believes can nudge the Utes into the NCAA Tournament if they win more than 20 games but fail to win the Mountain West Conference tournament in Las Vegas.

"I'm trying to build an elite program," he said.

Obviously, there's some risk involved, if the Utes have scheduled so aggressively that they don't win as many games as they did last season. That's when fans no doubt would forget all about the quality of the opponents and focus only the fact that the Utes strained to beat them.

But the Utes could also wind up getting more credit than they deserve, if you believe that their marquee opponents will bring reputations that outpace their actual talent.

That may not be a huge stretch, considering that Oregon went a modest 18-14 last season and then lost three solid seniors (coach Ernie Kent was already on the hot seat, midway through last season), while Cal has a new coach -- former Utah target Mike Montgomery -- who will be working without superstar forward Ryan Anderson and center DeVon Hardin (both potential first-round NBA Draft picks) after a 17-16 season. LSU finished 13-18 after firing its coach last season, hired Trent Johnson -- another former Utah target -- and watched heralded recruit J'Mison "BoBo" Morgan decide to bail on the Tigers and go to UCLA, instead.

Only Gonzaga was close to an elite team last season, finishing 25-8 and ranking as high as No. 14 in the AP Top 25, but losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to the Davidson team that reached the Elite Eight. Plus, the Zags will have guard Jeremy Pargo back, after the West Coast Conference player of the year withdrew from the NBA Draft.

In any event, the Utes should be applauded for not taking the easy route to 20 wins, like some teams in the Mountain West Conference.

And there's no question that fans will be elated to finally get some value for their ticket purchases, because even a middle-of-the-pack Cal or LSU team is going to be a far better attraction than even the Idaho States and Dixie States of last season, let alone some of the other vastly inferior teams that former coaches invited to the Huntsman Center in previous seasons.

"It's all part of the master plan in my mind ... to get this place back to where it should be," Boylen said.

Summer classes have resumed at the university, and all of coach Jim Boylen's incoming recruits arrived on campus last week in time to get going on them yesterday.

Guards Jace Tavita, Jordan Cyphers and Chris Hines joined forward Josh Sharp and center Jason Washburn all are present and accounted for, according to director of basketball operations Jonathan Dykema, and they're all starting to get acclimated into college life and acquainted with their new teammates -- except for guard Tyler Kepkay and forward Kim Tillie, who are away playing for their respective international teams.

Coaches are not allowed to supervise workouts with their players during the summer, but the players are allowed strength and conditioning workouts and pick-up games on their own. Meanwhile, the Utes are preparing to release their schedule for next season -- one Boylen is describing as the best in school history. That should happen in the next couple of days, so get ready.

Speaking of international players, it looks like a young Kiwi has caught the eye of the Utes ... and the Cougars.

Teen-aged shooting guard Brook Ruscoe of New Zealand apparently has put himself on the radar with both teams by sending video clips of his play to schools in the United States. The Utes evidently have been receiving quite a few tips on players in Australia and New Zealand, after playing an exhibition tour Down Under last summer.

However, the Utes have not offered a scholarship to the high-scoring 17-year-old, according to a source close to the situation, though the player said his hopes of playing at an American university "will be resolved within the next month." Ruscoe plays internationally for the Junior Tall Blacks, the Under-19 national team in New Zealand, and led the team by averaging 16.6 points at a tournament in Germany in March.

Having finished a session of summer classes, guard Tyler Kepkay and forward Kim Tillie are leaving today to play with their respective national teams in Canada and France.

Kepkay will be trying out for the Canadian national team at a camp in Toronto, potentially landing a place on the Olympic team for the 2008 Beijing Games. The Canadians still must qualify for the Olympics, though, at a last-chance tournament in Greece next month. In preparation, they will play a five-game exhibition series against Lebanaon and New Zealand starting June 30.

Meanwhile, Tillie will play with France's Under-20 national team as it prepares for the U-20 European Championship in Latvia at the start of August.

Johnnie Bryant was hardly expecting to land a job with the Jazz when he went to work out with them today. But he does think the experience can help him land a job overseas soon.

"Now I have a resource," he said, "another reference that can help me."

Bryant said he worked out with the Jazz mostly to provide a guard to practice pick-and-rolls and other drills with 7-foot-2 Roy Hibbert of Georgetown. But knowing that "everything in basketball goes off word of mouth," he figures that making the contacts within the NBA can only help.

To that extent, Bryant said he's sticking around Salt Lake City this summer -- "it's cheaper than California," the Oakland native said -- to work out while his agent works on finding him a basketball job overseas. Bryant doesn't have a preferred destination; he wants to end up anywhere he can get paid to play basketball, even though he recently earned his second college degree aafter finishing his eligibility with the Utes.

He might not be done working out with the Jazz, though.

Today's session was a "spur of the moment" thing, Bryant said, and expects that he might be called upon again if the Jazz need his help. By the end of the summer, though, he figures to have landed a basketball job somewhere -- though his ultimate post-basketball goal is to work as a sports agent.

In fact, it turns out that his agent and Hibbert's agent have a relationship, "so we had a lot more in common than we thought at the start of today."

Guard Johnnie Bryant, who recently graduated with his second college degree after exhausting in college basketball eligibility, is working out for the Jazz today at their practice facility.

He's not quite the major attraction, with Georgetown's Roy Hibbert gathering most of the attention. But I just spoke with JB and he said he'll fill us in on his workout and future plans later today. So check back later!

Just so you know, satellite TV customers ... DirecTV just announced that it will finally start carrying The Mtn. network on Aug. 27.

It will be available on Channel 616.

The network said it plans to broadcast 30 live regular-season football games next season, including three triple-headers on Saturdays. It also will show more than 100 men's and women's basketball games, among other events and original programming.

If you have the Dish Network, however, you're still out of luck. The Mtn. still has not reached a distribution agreement with the other major satellite company.

The Utes did not do anything wrong in recruiting Pleasant Grove's C.J. Wilcox, his father told my colleague Jay Drew late last night, but "it just felt right" for the younger Wilcox to choose to play college ball at Washington, instead.

"What intrigued me the most is coach [Lorenzo] Romar and their style of play," Craig Wilcox told The Seattle Times, seemingly unconcerned that the Huskies are bringing in three new guards in the fall as they attempt a return to a three-guard style.

"When you are 6-5 1/2 and can shoot the three the way he can shoot it, you can play anywhere and be a fit no matter who is out on the court," Craig Wilcox said.

The player himself told the Daily Herald in Provo that he liked both schools, but that Washington felt like a "better fit for me" after making an unofficial visit a couple of weeks ago. Yet he also hinted that the Utes don't run enough or play good enough competition for his liking.

"It's an up-speed team," he said. "I like how they run and play in the open floor. I also like the level of competition I'll be facing."

However true that might be, his father said he doesn't doubt the Utes under Boylen. "I personally believe coach Boylen is going to do something special at Utah," Craig Wilcox said.

Bad news for the Utes -- looks like Pleasant Grove's C.J. Wilcox has chosen to play at Washington, instead.

The all-state star had narrowed his list to the Utes and Huskies last week, but committed to the Huskies on Sunday. Sources said the Utes are not certain what factors ultimately pushed them out of the picture, having heard only from the player's father and not Wilcox himself.

Losing Wilcox is definitely a blow to the Utes, who aspire to land the players they view as the best in the state and keep them at home for college. Now, the Utes will have to shift their recruiting focus, and perhaps pursue some junior-college options in next year's class.