Utes finally break through on the road

FORT WORTH, Texas — It took clear until February, but the Utah basketball team finally picked up a road victory with a hard-fought 70-65 win over TCU Saturday night at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum.

Before Saturday, the Utes only win away from home came against Virginia on a neutral court at the San Juan Shootout in Puerto Rico. But the Utes overcame a season-high 25 turnovers to improve to 8-14 and 3-6 in Mountain West Conference play.

"It's been frustrating coming out on the road and coming so close and not getting the win, but we finally got one," said Ricky Johns, who led the Utes with 18 points. "We turned the ball over 25 times and still got the win. It goes back to playing defense and that's what we've worked on since the BYU game."

Ute coach Ray Giacoletti knew it wasn't the prettiest game of the year, but he wasn't worried about it.

"We've had a lot more aesthetically pleasing games and haven't won," said Giacoletti. "But we played hard tonight, played defense and boxed out. That's all we talked about before the game."

The 25 turnovers? No big deal.

Giacoletti said all he preached before the game was playing hard, playing tough defense and boxing out and his team did that, holding the Horned Frogs to 41.5 percent shooting, while outrebounding them 35 to 23.

"When you do those things, it's living proof that you can turn the ball over 25 times and still win the game," Giacoletti said.

Besides another solid game from Johns, who tied his career-high in points, the Utes got 15 point from Johnnie Bryant, 13 points and 10 rebounds from Luke Nevill and a career-best 10 points from Daniel Deane off the bench.

Brent Hackett led all scorers with 22 points and Kevin Langford added 21 for the Horned Frogs, who fell into the MWC basement at 2-7 with their seventh straight loss.

The Utes came out fast and led nearly the whole game.

They fell behind briefly at 26-22 when TCU ran off nine straight points, but scored 10 straight of their own and took a 36-29 halftime lead.

Early in the second half, with Deane playing in place of Nevill, who had three fouls, the Utes pushed the lead to 13 at 47-34. Then they went into one of their scoring droughts and didn't score a field goal for nearly seven minutes as TCU pulled within two at 54-52 with 7:29 left.