Turnovers plague Weber St. in loss

The way Randy Rahe saw it, his return to the Huntsman Center had too much of two things — Luke Nevill and turnovers.

Rahe, who spent two seasons assisting Utah coach Ray Giacoletti before being hired last spring to take over the Weber State program, enjoyed seeing friends and associates at his former place of employment. But little else was a welcome sight as the Wildcats (4-3) dropped a 67-55 decision to the Utes.

The Wildcats simply had no answer for Luke Nevill. The 7-foot-1 Utah center dominated the paint and scored a game-high 24 points on 11-of-12 shooting.

But as good as Nevill was, Weber State might have had a chance in the game had it been able to control its own offensive possessions. The Wildcats coughed the ball up 21 times and that, Rahe said, was far too many turnovers for an inexperienced team to deal with on the road against a quality Utah squad.

"I don't like them," Rahe said. "We had 21 turnovers and that's probably the difference in the game, to be honest with you."

The Wildcats trailed by nine points six minutes into the second half but slowly trimmed that deficit to just three points when David Patten blocked a Johnnie Bryant fast-break layup and sparked a fast break.

Tyler Billing fired a pass on the other end of the floor to Dezmon Harris who hit a 3-pointer in transition on the left wing. That made the score 44-41 with 12:43 to play, but was a close as WSU got.

"We got out of sync and got a little hyper out there,' Weber State point guard Brody Van Brocklin, who made his first career start for WSU in the game, said. "We made a little run and then got a little lazy with the ball ... We started settling for good shots instead of great shots and kind of let our offense get away from us."

A 35-27 halftime deficit could have been much worse for Weber State as they opened the game hitting just 3-of-10 shots from the floor. But a handful of timely 3-pointers from Patten, Harris and Juan Pablo Silveira kept the 'Cats in the contest.

Silveira, in particular, though, struggled at times. Entering the game averaging 10.5 points and shooting a tad better than 60 percent, the sophomore from Mt. Vernon Academy hit only one of his four shots, had just one assist and turned the ball over six times in only 17 minutes.

Rahe has just two days to get his team to take better care of the ball. A Saturday night date in the Dee Events Center with Brigham Young awaits and the Cougars thrive when forcing turnovers and feature a lineup with Nevill-sized big men.

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E-mail: jeborn@desnews.com