Old nemesis stands in Utah's way

"We were real confident, but everybody was focused," Markson said.

"We understood (we were underdogs), but we came in here and believed in ourselves," said Tim Drisdom.

The Utes set up a play before the game for Drisdom to hit Markson on a backdoor cut along the right baseline and it worked perfectly with Markson finishing the play with a resounding dunk. The Utes had drawn that play up just the day before.

"I knew we would score on that," Drisdom said.

The Sooners briefly tied it, but once Marc Jackson buried a pair of 3-pointers within a 33-second span, the Utes were off and running.

The Utes just might have set a school record for dunks and, surprisingly, none came from Bogut, who makes quite a spectacle of his dunks, bending the rim as he lifts his legs off the ground.

Utah scored eight baskets off dunks with five by Justin Hawkins, who led the Utes with 20 points, and three by Markson, who scored 16 points. In fact, the Ute shot chart for the second half is one of the oddest ever seen with two 3-pointers by Marc Jackson, two shots in the lane by Bogut and three misses by Drisdom, Markson and Bogut. The other made shots included the six dunks along with layups by Markson, Bogut and Richard Chaney.

The Utes shot 76.5 percent in the second half on 13 of 17 to finish at 59.5 for the game.

If the Utes can somehow find a way to beat its archenemy Friday, they will face the Duke-Michigan State winner on Sunday afternoon.

A win there would send the Utes to the Final Four for the fifth time in school history and the first time since 1998 when they made it to the finals, where they lost to, who else, Kentucky.

But first, they need to get by Kentucky on Friday.

UTE NOTES: The players and coaches flew back on a charter Saturday night along with the band, cheerleaders and Ute administrators. Instead of a movie, they watched a replay of the game against Oklahoma . . . The Utes will practice Monday and Tuesday and take off for Austin on Wednesday afternoon . . . Bogut was named Sunday as one of the four finalists for the Naismith Trophy along with Wake Forest's Chris Paul, Duke's J.J. Redick and Kansas' Wayne Simien.

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