The Utes will get their first real test of the season this weekend, when they travel to Colorado for a secret scrimmage with the Buffaloes.

Sadly, though, we'll learn little about it.

Under the rules that allow teams to substitute such a scrimmage in place of a preseason exhibition game, teams are not allowed to publicize or open the events to fans or media -- a prohibition that extends to even providing statistics from the match-up. The best coach Jim Boylen can do is vaguely assess the performance of his players.

Still, the scrimmage gives the Utes a chance to finally run and bang against somebody other than themselves on Saturday, and Boylen believes it will give them more of a challenge than would an exhibition against an overmatched lower-division team.

"I don't want to be disrespectful to a Division III or an NAIA [team] or anything, but we didn't feel this was a year where beating somebody by 35 points helped us get better in our preseason," Boylen said.

The Utes are trying to mix five freshmen into a system dominated by four starting seniors. The Buffs are in a similar situation, with five freshmen -- but only one senior and one junior -- among their seven newcomers for coach Jeff Bzdelik's second season. The coaches know each other from spending years in the NBA.

"We have a great relationship," Boylen said. "We value the same things. ... I'm kind of rebuilding a program, and I think he's building a program. He's got seven new guys and I've got five, and it just seemed like a great fit for both of us. We think of the game in the same way, and I'm really looking forward to it."

The USA Today/ESPN preseason coaches poll is out, and though the Utes are not on it, a couple of their upcoming opponents are there.

Gonzaga is the highest-ranked opponent, checking in at No. 11, while Oklahoma comes in at No. 13. The Utes play the Sooners on the road on Dec. 13, but get Gonzaga at home on Dec. 31.

The Utes also play several teams that received votes in the poll but didn't reach the Top 25, including UNLV, Brigham Young and LSU. No Mountain West Conference teams are in the top 25, and only one coach in the league -- San Diego State's Steve Fisher -- has a vote.

Coach Jim Boylen put the Utes through their second intrasquad scrimmage of the preseason today, splitting up to play five six-minute "quarters," plus a three-minute overtime, just about seven hours after a grueling early-morning workout.

The verdict?

"I did see some improvement," Boylen said. "But it's not where it needs to be."

Center Luke Nevill looked strong again, scoring 25 points (but grabbing only two rebounds) while making all 10 of his free throws in 17 minutes. His Red Team won the scrimmage 66-47, with forward Kim Tillie scoring 13 points and grabbing five rebounds.

Point guard Luka Drca was back in action after returning the other day from his sprained ankle, scoring four points with three assists, and a steal against two turnovers for the Red Team.

Freshman Jordan Cyphers led the White Team with 21 points, hitting three three-pointers as part of a 6-for-12 shooting performance mitigated only by his four turnovers. The White Team shot only 37.2 percent overall, though, compared to 67 percent for the Red Team.

"We've scrimmaged more this year than we ever have," Boylen said, "to play together more, to scrimmage more, more game situations, more end-of-game situations. ...We've done two of these now, and we didn't do any last year -- with the clock and stats and all that."

Boylen added that the Utes continue to emphasize defense, rebounding and running the floor -- three elements of the game that they believe will have the most impact on their season. And that's where the scrimmages help.

"It's one thing to have them in a practice situation, to monitor and chart them," Boylen said. "But in a game situation, it gets easier to see what's not going well, what we need to get better at, and tweak. Maybe parts of it are good and parts of it aren't. It's harder to see that in a practice situation, when you're starting and stopping."

We've been making a bid deal out of coach Jim Boylen's rugged schedule, featuring five teams that played in the NCAA Tournament last season.

Well, here's a look at what his mentor has in store this season.

Coach Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans are playing 10 teams that made the tournament last season, in the latest example of his belief in tough scheduling. It's a philosophy that rubbed off on Boylen, his former assistant.

"I just never want to be on Dick Vitale's 'cream puff' scheduling list," Izzo joked. "But many years ago we took on the 'any time, any where' theory of playing people and it's kind of stayed with me."

The Mountain West Conference and Missouri Valley Conference plan to announce today an agreement to pit men's basketball teams from each league against one another starting next season, in the fashion of the annual ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

Sources said the agreement calls for all nine Mountain West teams to play nine of the 10 Missouri Valley teams in November and December each season. The exact match-ups and television arrangements have not been determined.

The agreement calls for five of the nine annual games to be played on one league's home courts one season, and on the other league's home courts the following season.

The Mountain West has been working on such a deal for about the last six months, hoping to help its teams improve their home schedules -- seen as a key element in building their resumes for the NCAA Tournament. Last season, the Mountain West ranked as the ninth-best league in the country, according to the Ratings Percentage Index, with the Missouri Valley just ahead in eighth.

The Missouri Valley Conference includes teams such as Drake, Creighton, Bradley and Southern Illinois.

One of the biggest questions about the Utes this season is how coach Jim Boylen will use his point guards.

Senior Tyler Kepkay was the starter for much of last season, but struggled mightily in league play and ultimately was benched in favor of junior Luka Drca. And while Drca played quite well, he's maybe not quite as fast as the Utes would like in getting the ball up the floor. Meanwhile, freshman Jace Tavita is talented, but still hasn't played a college game.

Boylen said the other day he's still not sure how his rotation will work out. Has Kepkay bounced back from his confidence-shattering junior season (Boylen believes he has)? Will Drca be able to push the pace (presuming his ankle injury last week doesn’t linger)? And will Tavita show the maturity on the floor that would give Boylen the confidence to use him?

So far, at least, Boylen isn't writing anyone off, except probably freshman Chris Hines, whose ankle injury remains at least three weeks from healing enough for him to re-join practice.

Even Tavita, he said, has a chance to play major minutes -- particularly if one of the others is hurt. That's what happened at the team's first scrimmage last week, when Drca was unable to play. In his place, Tavita showed well.

"It just seemed to click for him," Boylen said.

Fans who attended the Utes' intrasquad scrimmage last night surely noticed when forward Morgan Grim stepped out twice and hit long jump shots from the wing.

"He has worked on that a ton," coach Jim Boylen said.

It's a weapon the Riverton native hopes to add to his arsenal this season, after practicing a lot with his father and an assistant coach over the summer, though Boylen expects the 6-foot-8 sophomore probably will spend more time playing back-up to center Luke Nevill than forward Shaun Green.

"Don't hold me to that," Boylen said. "But I think that's where it's going."

For his part, Grim said he hopes to eventually move into a forward role similar to Green -- "I can shoot the three," he insisted -- but enjoys playing center, too, even though he's still just 225 pounds.

"I like to bang in there as a five, because I'm, like, undersized," he said. "People like to look at me like that, like I'm some sort of target, and I love that. I love that sort of stuff. I love taking it to guys who think that."

He's pretty good at it, too.

Seems as if more often than not, he does a good job being physical with the much larger Nevill in practice. Several times in the scrimmage, in fact, he kept Nevill -- 7-foot-2 and 265 pounds -- from backing him down on the block, and forced him to put up hooks or short jumpers.

"I'm just trying to kind of find my game after my freshman year," Grim said, "kind of find my role."

The season has barely started, and already, the Utes are short-handed.

Junior guard Luka Drca sprained his ankle during a two-hour practice earlier in the day, so he sat out the "JimmyBall" intrasquad scrimmage at the Huntsman Center on Thursday night. And with freshman guard Chris Hines already nursing an ankle injury, the Utes had only two point guards available -- senior Tyler Kepkay and Jace Tavita.

So coach Jim Boylen split them up, with Kepkay headlining the Red Team and Tavita spearheading the White Team.

Ultimately, the Red Team won 36-28 after two 12-minute halves with a mostly running clock, but Boylen was pretty liberal about switching players between the sides, so there's only so much you can read into that.

Center Luke Nevill had a good night, hitting a number of hooks over Morgan Grim to finish with 14 points, seven rebounds and two steals. Grim had his moments, too, showing off his improved shooting touch with a couple of long jumpers en route to eight points.

"At times, our defense was very good," Boylen said. "At times, we didn't get the ball out of the net fast enough to start our running game. We want to run on makes and misses. I didn't think we did a good job running off makes."

The coach was discouraged to learn that Drca will miss up to a week after landing on forward Carlon Brown's foot and twisting his ankle. But he praised Nevill for making a good attempt to rebound more -- "it seemed like he was around every rebound, which is what I've asked him to do," Boylen said -- and said he was pleased with Tavita and fellow freshman Jordan Cyphers.

Tavita finished with three points, five assists and three turnovers and looked poised running the team, while Cyphers buried a pair of three-pointers, which is what the Utes want him to do. Forward Shaun Green looked good, too, along with Brown -- though Brown just missed on a couple of sensational pass and shot attempts that kept him from scoring more than five points.

"It just gives us a feel," Boylen said.

The Utes also added a walk-on to the roster, with junior Kyle Perkins joining the team after playing last season at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. The 6-foot-4 guard is ineligible this season under transfer rules, so he will only practice with the team.

Naturally, Boylen took to the public-address microphone after the scrimmage, telling fans how much he appreciated them attending.

"What we're working for is to become a team that you can be proud of and that you can rally behind," he said, adding later that "I really feel we have the makings of a championship team."

Don't know if you saw it, but Salt Lake City is one of five finalist cities bidding to host the Mountain West Conference men's and women's basketball tournaments from 2011-2013.

The others?

Albuquerque, Denver, Las Vegas and San Diego.

The Utah Sports Commission is spearheading the bid, which is one of just two that would place the tournament at a neutral site -- in this case, either EnergySolutions Arena or the E Center. The Denver bid proposes to put the tournament at the Pepsi Center, something the league already tried, to decidedly unenthusiastic fan reviews from 2004-06.

Choosing a neutral site would eliminate the perennial problem of giving a team home-court advantage in the tournament, something UNLV has enjoyed at the Thomas & Mack Center in recent seasons, to the eternal disgust of the rest of the league's coaches and fans.

However, the league has always worried about holding the tournament in a wintery climate such as Salt Lake or Denver, fearing the lack of dependable sunshine and warm weather (or casinos) would dissuade fans from traveling to the event. That turned out to be true for Denver, where not even many local fans turned out -- though Salt Lake City presumably would draw more local fans because of a greater interest in Utah and Brigham Young.

The league said that 16 cities received a "request-for-bid" on the tournament last summer, before it whittled the list to the five finalists. A subcommittee will review the proposals and make a recommendation to the league's joint council in May, with the council's decision forwarded to the ruling board of directors for a final decision in June.

Looks like you'll have to settle for the Boise State vs. Fresno State football game on the day after Thanksgiving.

The Mtn. announced today that it will not be televising the Utes when they play at Missouri State on Nov. 28, as originally planned. Network spokesman Hayne Ellis said in an e-mail that the network has learned that the Missouri company whose broadcast of the game the Mtn. had planned to simulcast -- MediaCom -- has decided not to produce the game.

So there will be no Utes on television that night, and Ellis said the Mtn. does not plan to add an alternate game to the schedule.

It was center Jason Washburn's turn to endure coach Jim Boylen's fury at practice yesterday, getting yelled at and banished to running stairs for all manner of shortcomings -- from not positioning himself well to not competing hard enough.

But he's cool with it.

The 7-foot freshman told me recently that he "loves" Boylen in large part because of the coach's ability to teach and get more out of his players. "He's just a great motivator, if I've ever seen one," Washburn said. "The best that there can be. It's what he's good at. It's what makes him a two-time NBA champion. He's the best at it."

Washburn -- never at a loss for words -- has known Boylen since he was a freshman in high school and the coach began recruiting him while at Michigan State. The Battle Creek native remembers attending Spartan games and watching Boylen as much as the players.

Players would "come off the court, Boylen would tear them apart, then leave them alone for two minutes and go back down there and give them a hug," Washburn recalled. "I'm not going to say that's something I'm not used to, in a coach. But it's something I rarely see and something that I really never got."

Washburn said he's not sure whether he will wind up redshirting or not this season, though he would fine either way. Judging by the workouts so far, Washburn is going to have to put some weight on his 210-pound frame and get stronger -- particularly in his lower body -- to hold his own in the college game.

Still, he has the skills -- he was rated the best center prospect in the Mountain West Conference by Rivals.com -- and he's excited to be here.

"My freshman year, no matter how much I play, it has so many more ups than downs," he said.

The Utes plan to hold their first and only public "JimmyBall" scrimmage of the season at the Huntsman Center at 7 on Thursday night, and the event is free.

Coach Jim Boylen plans to have his players scrimmage for about half an hour -- technically, two 15-minute halves, with running clock and a 5-minute halftime -- after setting a game-like atmosphere with player introductions. Women's coach Elaine Elliott will address the crowd, too, though her team does not plan to scrimmage.

The scrimmage takes the place of a "Midnight Madness" type of event, and will be the only chance for fans to see the Utes before their exhibition opener against Grand Valley State on Nov. 8.

"We are trying to make everything as fan-friendly as possible," Boylen said.

The Utes noted in a release today that the scrimmage also will feature Rick Bouillon, the new public address announcer for the upcoming season.

It looked about the same as it always does, the first day practice. Bunch of really tall guys wearing red and white, dashing up and down the court, the squeak of their sneakers and the shouts of the coaches echoing off the walls.

But it definitely felt different to the Utes.

Though they're still just running drills and perfecting the playbook, coach Jim Boylen and the Utes said they're already far ahead of where they were last season at this time, having spent a year learning their new system and each other.

"Instead of preparing to get used to the system, we actually know the system," senior forward Shaun Green said. "Now, we're just preparing to win games."

The Utes had some company, too.

University president Michael Young stopped by -- Boylen had his players all run over to him and thank him for his support with a handshake -- while recruit Shawn Glover watched from the sideline on his official recruiting visit. The 6-foot-6 forward from Texas already has committed to join the Utes next season.

Freshman guard Chris Hines dressed and shot around lightly, but still isn't recovered enough from his lingering sprained ankle to practice with his teammates. Boylen said he will be out at least another month.

Otherwise, the players were ready to go, and mostly pleased their coach.

Boylen said he wanted to see how well they communicated and helped each other during practice. "I thought at times, we did both well," he said. "And at times we did both poorly. I've got seven, eight or maybe nine guys that I think are in great shape and understand how hard you have to play at this level, and I've got six or seven that are still learning that."

"But again, our system is in place," Boylen said. "We have to work on it, we have to get better at it. It's just a nice feeling to know that we're all going into our second year."

Welcome to the start of basketball season!

The Utes officially open practice this afternoon, after having most of a week off for fall break. They're not having a blowout open practice in the old "Midnight Madness" fashion, but rather waiting for the annual Night With the Runnin' Utes scrimmage next week to give fans a sneak preview of the team.

Nevertheless, the countdown is on -- just three weeks until the first exhibition game against Grand Valley State, and a month until the season-opener against Southwest Baptist.

Remember how my Mountain West Conference preseason prediction ballot had San Diego State third, one spot ahead of the Utes?

Yeah, well, I'm taking it back.

While the Aztecs have a roster loaded with returning talent, it looks like a good deal of that talent could spend the season in legal trouble.

Forward Lorrenzo Wade has been suspended indefinitely and charged with a first-degree felony for allegedly stealing a television out of a woman's apartment in the middle of the night, while a bench warrant has been issued for guard Richie Williams, who failed to attend a program related to his drunken-driving conviction last season.

And as if that and the long list of discipline problems the Aztecs have endured are not embarrassing enough, coach Steve Fisher said he did not even realize Williams had not completed the terms of his punishment until he was told about an article describing it posted on the San Diego Union-Tribune web site.

So revise my ballot -- Utes third, New Mexico fourth, and whichever Aztecs are still roaming around free fifth.

Maybe you saw the article we published today about how the coaches in the Mountain West Conference believe the upcoming season can be special, because of experience coming back and the generally improved schedules around the league.

But coach Jim Boylen had plenty more to say on the topic than we could fit into print.

Though he agreed with some of his colleagues that it's increasingly difficult to get "marquee" teams to agree to home-and-home scheduling arrangements -- Air Force's Jeff Reynolds was particularly agitated about the problem -- he said it has to be done.

"As a group, our league needs to improve our schedule strength, for us to be a three, four-bid league," he said. "I think we should be a three or four-bid league. I think we have the talent. I think we have the level of schools to do that. But overall, we all have to play more competitive schedules."

Reynolds complained that big schools armed with plenty of money, such as Stanford, generally want to just pay Air Force to come play in their arenas without returning the trip. That way, they can load their schedules with tons of home games, increasing the likelihood of having a good record and making a nice profit.

And while that suggests a level of respect that maybe isn't reflected among fans nationwide -- Stanford is worried about playing at Clune Arena? -- it doesn't help the cause in the Mountain West.

Boylen, however, found a way to make it work for the Utes, who play at Oklahoma and against Oregon, Cal, Gonzaga and LSU at home this season.

"I always say, 'We'll come there first,'" he said. "And their argument's over. You know, when you come into it and you say I want you to come to our place first, right away, there's, 'Whoa, whoa ... hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.' Obviously, we're at altitude and obviously we have a great tradition, and I also think, humbly, that people think we're getting better."

The final words of the question were not even out of the reporter's mouth at the annual Mountain West Conference media day in Las Vegas, and already coach Jim Boylen had an answer about what he felt senior center Luke Nevill needed to do to improve this season.

"Rebound," Boylen said.

His 7-foot-1 center grabbed 6.7 rebounds per game last season to lead the team and rank fourth in the league. But Boylen wants him to haul down more like nine or 10 per game -- both to help Nevill become a first-round pick in the NBA Draft and help the Utes improve on their 18-15 record from last season.

"He's kept his weight up and his body fat down," Boylen said. "He's spent more time with his teammates, and he's bought in more to the things that I think are important."

Just as we suspected, the Utes were picked to finish fourth in the media poll that was released at the annual media day, behind UNLV, Brigham Young and San Diego State. They did not receive any first-place votes, but Nevill was voted to the preseason all-conference team.

For his part, Nevill believes he can improve his rebounding numbers if he crashes the boards more and hold his box-out less. He said he did that last season to try to assure that at least his teammates could grab rebounds, but is willing to be more aggressive going after the ball -- particularly out of his area -- this coming season.

And speaking of being more aggressive, Nevill acknowledged that he has made more of an effort to connect with his teammates, reflecting on Boylen's urging to become enough of a leader to "run the team." Nevill said that spending much of the summer together with his teammates -- something that hadn't really happened before, when players scattered for the summer -- "has really improved our team chemistry. We kind of gelled together a lot better and that relationship off the court has really helped out on the court."

"We knew we had an OK relationship off the court, all the guys," he added, "but I knew that my relationship with the guys wasn't as strong as it needed to be for me to be a leader of the team. For me to be able to say something to one of the guys on the team and for them to be, like, ‘OK, yeah.'"

Coach Jim Boylen and senior center Luke Nevill are headed to the Mountain West Conference's annual media day in Las Vegas on Tuesday, and it will be interesting to see how they rank in the preseason poll that will be released there.

Probably, we can expect fourth or fifth.

That's about where most preseason magazines seem to be picking the Utes, and many of the people who write those previews are media members around the league who voted in the poll. Me, I put the Utes fourth -- behind UNLV, Brigham Young and San Diego State, but ahead of New Mexico -- leaning heavily, as I did last year, on the idea that the teams with veteran coaches who have established continuity have a better chance to remain competitive year after year.

But really, that top group seems as if it could go any number of ways.

All of the teams have at least several top players returning, and all have upgraded their non-conference schedules. Much is going to depend on how much the returning players have improved -- have the Utes improved enough that it will be good for them to have all five starters back, for example, or will they play at pretty much the same level as last year? -- and which newcomers are ready to make an impact.

My guess is that the Utes will be noticeably better, now that they've had a year with Boylen, and will improve by two or three victories from last year -- an estimate mitigated by their rugged non-conference schedule.

By the way, former center Andrew Bogut is the only Utah player to be named to the league's 10th anniversary team, joining nine other players selected by members of the media, school officials and an online poll of fans.

Coach Jim Boylen received some good news today, learning that freshman guard Jace Tavita has been cleared by the NCAA and will be academically eligible to play for the Utes this season.

The NCAA had been investigating Tavita's transcript, after a troubled academic career in high school that at one point had him transfer to a prep school in North Carolina after being declared ineligible at Brighton High School.

But Tavita returned and improved in the classroom, and completed enough work to be eligible in college. He missed a few of the team's mini-workouts early on, but had been allowed to participate for the past week or so while the NCAA reviewed his case.

Now, the only serious concern about the new freshmen centers around guard Chris Hines, who has been battling a severely sprained ankle for weeks and has not been able to work out with the team. It's uncertain whether he will be ready to go when practice officially begins next Friday.

Coach Jim Boylen has nearly a week before his Utes return from fall break for the official start of practice next week, when he will start to get a real feel for how well they might come together for his second season.

For now, though, he's feeling pretty good about them.

"We're bigger, we're stronger, we're faster," he said.

Probably, that's what almost every coach is going to say this time of year, but it beats having a team that looks smaller, weaker and slower. And though the Utes have four seniors on the roster and seven of their top eight scorers back from their 18-15 team last season, Boylen says that "what we really have" is five freshmen and 10 sophomores -- since even the juniors and seniors are entering just their second season playing in his system.

"I like the fact that the veteran guys are helping the younger guys," Boylen said. "They're taking ownership of the younger guys picking up the system. It's fun right now."

Boylen added that three weeks ago, he was worried that his players might not be as well-conditioned as they were last year, following their summertime exhibition tour of Australia. But while the Utes have "had to take it at a little different pace," that fear has been allayed.

"I envision us to be ready for the 17th, the same way we were last year," he said. "And I thought we were in great shape last year."

The Utes are holding their final mini-practice session today taking time off for fall break next week, in advance of the official start of practice Oct. 17.

And so far, freshman guard Jordan Cyphers seems to be doing pretty well.

"It's day by day," he said, "because it's a lot to learn. Back in high school, I didn't have that many sets and here we have a hundred-something sets, so it's a lot to learn. I'll get it, though."

Coach Jim Boylen certainly expects he will.

The 6-foot-4 sharpshooter figures to play primarily shooting guard, and could wind up in a role similar to former guard Johnnie Bryant, who was called upon mostly to score from outside off the bench last season. Cyphers averaged 22 points last season and was a second-team all-state player after leading Southeast High School in Wichita to the Class 6A championship in Kansas.

"We're trying to get him to understand where his shots are going to come from," Boylen said. "He can really shoot the ball."

Cyphers could be a crucial part of the Utes' effort to replace the nearly three three-pointers per game that Bryant made last season. Guards Tyler Kepkay, Lawrence Borha and forward Shaun Green "hopefully can each make one more," Boylen said. "And if Cyphers can make another one, great. ... I'll take what I can get from him. I don't know how it's going to work out, but I want him to understand why he's here. He's here to make shots, and then get better at the other things."

With that in mind, Cyphers seems like the freshman most likely to have a big impact this season. Center Jason Washburn is a highly regarded prospect, but he's still thin and playing behind senior Luke Nevill, while guard Chris Hines has been battling injury and fellow guard Jace Tavita might not be academically eligible.

"Basically, I'm here to do whatever the team needs," Cyphers said.

Luka Drca said he's "perfectly fine" now, but that doesn't mean that the whole summer that he'd hoped to spend improving his game with some international experience wasn't ruined.

The junior guard said he tore the quadriceps muscle in his thigh when he was hit there during a practice game in advance of the third annual Friendship Games -- the tournament in Israel in which Drca was supposed to participate in early June, with a team of college players from his native Serbia.

"I was in bed for almost two months," Drca said.

Drca spent that time at home in Belgrade, and said he has only been back on his feet at full strength for the past two months or so. So instead of being able to "work as hard as I could" over the summer and coming back to school in prime condition, Drca has found himself working to catch up on his fitness.

"Now I still have time to improve my skills before the season starts," he said.

The Utes are still waiting to learn whether freshman guard Jace Tavita will be cleared academically to play for them this season, and coach Jim Boylen said he has no idea when the NCAA might render a decision.

"It's out of our hands," he said, putting his hands together as if in prayer and looking to the ceiling.

Tavita has been practicing with the Utes in their limited sessions since the NCAA granted him clearance to do so last week, but could still be declared ineligible for the season. Meanwhile, fellow freshman guard Chris Hines is still battling a sprained ankle, which has lingered for what seems like forever and required an injection last week.

"We're going to hold him out till it really feels good," Boylen said. "He's a tough kid. He hates sitting out. We told him to sit out, and I caught him up here one night, shooting. So he's one of those kind of guys. We have to watch him like a hawk, because he's a gym rat, which is why we wanted him -- his toughness and his love for being in the gym."

We noted last week how the Utes are trying to enliven the atmosphere in the Huntsman Center on game days. Now, we can examine another way they’re trying to draw fans:

Creative ticketing.

The Utes have created three new ticket designations they hope will appeal to fans who might not have the time or money to buy full season-tickets. Fans can choose from the “Fantastic 4 Pack,” the “Family 4 Pack” or the “All U Can Eat Special” -- which might not be quite as good as you're hoping, considering the Utes aren't setting up a buffet table for your gorging pleasure.

The Fantastic 4 Pack includes tickets to four games against high-profile opponents Oregon, Cal, Gonzaga and LSU, and costs $80 per person in the lower bowl or $28 per person in the "red zone" upper bowl.

The Family 4 Pack gives fans four game tickets, four hot dogs, four sodas and a parking pass -- all for $50 if it's a premium game (like, say, Oregon) or $40 if it's a non-premium game (such as Colorado State).

And then there's the All U Can Eat Special.

For $15 each, that includes but a single hot dog to accompany an upper-bowl "red zone" ticket, but also unlimited soda and popcorn for non-premium games against Wisconsin-Green Bay, Weber State, Colorado State, San Diego State, Air Force and TCU. Sure, we'd all love to have barbecued ribs. But for $15, that seems like a pretty good deal to me.

If you've actually been to a Utes game, you know that the game-day atmosphere doesn't exactly measure up to coach Jim Boylen's furious intensity on the sideline.

Funereal seems like a word that fits, far too often.

But the Utes are trying to change that. Having convened an athletic department committee in the offseason to study the problem -- snarky thought: they needed a committee? -- they're planning several noticeable changes for the upcoming season that marketing director Ann Ronchetti described as the first parts of a plan to liven up the Huntsman Center.

"We just want to make it great and exciting for the fans," Ronchetti said, "so that not only are they seeing a great product on the floor, but they're having a great time in the stands."

Perhaps most noticeably, the Utes will have a new public-address announcer in Rick Bouillon and new directors of both the band and the Crimson Line dance team, which Ronchetti said will aspire to bring a "new, fresh look to those three elements," along with more interactive features on the video scoreboard during the game.

The Utes hope to get all of those factions more involved in the games, and will switch to announcing each team's starting lineup all at once, so Bouillon can get "a little peppier" in introducing the Utes and hopefully set a more exciting tone for the game.

They also have hired a new company to run the video board, and plan video pieces and concourse banners similar to the ones they featured last season in celebration of the university's 100th season of basketball that enjoyed "such a great reaction," Ronchetti said. The Utes are cultivating a greater relationship with the Junior Jazz program to draw more kids to the games, too, and have designated four games that will feature the aspiring players at halftime.

Even the MUSS will have a halftime show at some point, as well, and fans will have a chance to offer their own suggestions for improvements via an online survey that Ronchetti is preparing.

"It's just kind of a process we're working on," she said. "We just hope the fans have a good reaction."