Much went wrong against Wyoming

You can look at Utah's Monday night loss to Wyoming in a couple of ways.

You can say that the loss was expected, since Laramie has never been an easy place for the Utes to win in recent years. Heck, Keith Van Horn, Michael Doleac, Andre Miller and Alex Jensen never won a game at the Arena-Auditorium. Coach Rick Majerus rarely won there. The Final Four team of 1998 lost to a mediocre Cowboy team there. The Utes didn't win a single game there for a decade from 1993 to 2002.

Or else you can say the Utes blew their championship hopes against the last-place team in the Mountain West Conference in a mistake-filled game where they looked little like they have in recent weeks.

With the 74-65 loss, the Utes dropped two games behind Air Force in the loss column at 7-3. The Falcons come to the Huntsman Center on Saturday for a 1 p.m. game that should have title ramifications.

A Falcon win would put some serious space between them and the rest of the league, with just a few games left. A Ute win pulls them back within a half game with a chance to be tied in the loss column if the Falcons lose Monday night against BYU in Provo (and the Utes can beat New Mexico).

In Monday night's loss, the Utes' first under interim coach Kerry Rupp, nearly everything that has been going right for the Utes lately went wrong.

Here's a short list:

• Rebounding. The Utes had outrebounded 15 straight opponents and 21 of 23 opponents all season. But the Cowboys outboarded the Utes 37 to 33, with 18 rebounds coming on the offensive boards.

• Free-throw shooting. The Utes sank just 3 of 7 after making 77 percent of their free throws during MWC play. The fact that they got only seven free throws compared with 24 for the Cowboys is another story.

• Guard play. Over the first nine games of the MWC season, Nick Jacobson looked like the league player of the year. But Monday he had his worst shooting night as a Ute, going 3 for 17 from the field, including 2 of 12 from 3-point range. And Tim Drisdom, after four outstanding offensive games in a row, was shut down by the Wyoming defense, getting off just two shots, making one, with just two assists in 34 minutes of action.

• Defense. It has gradually gotten worse over the past few games, and Monday night the Utes allowed a bunch of easy layups, dunks and uncontested 3-pointers while letting Wyoming get all those second-chance baskets.