Utah Jazz unable to cash in on chances in loss to Milwaukee Bucks

MILWAUKEE — Starting small forward Andrei Kirilenko was in the locker room, parked by strained left calf. Usual finishing big man Paul Millsap was on the bench, sitting with five fouls.

Yet the Jazz had chances anyway against Milwaukee on Friday night.

Just didn't take advantage of them.

The Jazz rallied from 12 points down late in the third quarter, but a lost rebound and a missed 3-pointer ultimately doomed them in a 95-87 loss at the Bradley Center.

"I like the kind of game we had tonight. You know, there's not any give or take out there. ... I think that's good," said Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, who appreciated his 42-23 club fight despite its four-game win streak was snapped by a 35-29 Milwaukee team that's won five straight.

"If you like to play, those are the kinds of games you like to play," Sloan added. "You compete like the devil, and go home."

Or in this case head to Oklahoma City for Sunday's end to a four-game trip, one soured — even if only a tad — by how the Milwaukee stop ended.

"This is a playoff team, this is one of the hottest teams in the league," Jazz point Deron Williams said of the Bucks, whose only loss in their last 12 outings came in overtime at Atlanta. "We're disappointed we lost. We wanted to try to keep it going. But it's not the end of the world. We'll bounce back."

Not that things bounced their way Friday.

After the Jazz used a 14-3 run late in the third quarter and early in the fourth to erase a 68-56 Bucks lead, Milwaukee had a mini-comeback of its own.

Utah was up 78-75 after a Carlos Boozer dunk with six minutes and five seconds remaining, but the Bucks broke an 87-87 tie when backup big Ersan Ilyasova scored the rebound of an Andrew Bogut miss to put Milwaukee ahead to stay with 27.2 seconds left.

"Obviously that rebound I missed with Ilyasova broke our back a little bit," said Boozer, who finished with a game-high 26 points and game-high 14 rebounds for his 43rd double-double this season, with regard to a board actually tipped into Ilyasova's hands by a finger touch from Utah's Kyle Korver.

"I jumped for the block (on Bogut), and I was kind of short. Then he came from nowhere and took the rebound," Mehmet Okur added with reference to fellow Turk Ilyasova, who scored 14 on a night the Bucks got 24 points from John Salmons, 23 from Brandon Jennings and a 16-point, 12-rebound double-double from ex-University of Utah center Bogut. "That's what he (Ilyasova) does. He's always in motion around the basket."

Okur had his chance to answer, but his 3-point attempt with 19.9 seconds to go missed the mark — as did every other Utah trey try Friday.