Utah Jazz: No D-Will, no Knight, no problem for Jazz

Who needs true point guards anyway?

Playing without their only two true points — Deron Williams (ankle) and Brevin Knight (groin) were out with injuries — the Utah Jazz rallied past the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night for a 105-94 win.

It was Utah's second win in a row at EnergySolutions Arena after dropping three straight on a rough road trip.

C.J. Miles led the Jazz in scoring for a second game in a row, finishing with 25 points and Carlos Boozer added 20 points and 11 rebounds. Boozer, however, did not finish the game and left for the locker room in the fourth quarter with a strained left quad.

Boozer will be evaluated Thursday to determine the extent of his injury for the already injury-plagued Jazz. Ronnie Price started at point and scored 16 points with six assists, but Andrei Kirilenko and C.J. Miles also played some point guard minutes.

Kirilenko finished with 16 points, seven rebounds, five steals, four blocks and three assists.

After building a 16-point lead in the first half, Milwaukee stormed back and claimed its own double-digit lead in the second half before the Jazz pulled away in the second half.

Next up for the 8-4 Jazz is a two-game road trip this weekend at San Antonio on Friday and in Memphis on Saturday.

Using a funky lineup of five forwards — Paul Millsap, Andrei Kirilenko, Matt Harpring, Kyle Korver and C.J. Miles — the Jazz turned a 10-point lead into a 16-point edge with 7-1/2 minutes remaining in the second quarter.

But it quickly went downhill for shorthanded Utah after that. The Bucks, who were also playing without star Michael Redd and Charlie Villanueva ended the quarter by making a 26-8 push to take a two-point lead at halftime.

Richard Jefferson led the Bucks and all scorers in the opening half with 18 points. C.J. Miles had 13 for Utah.

The Bucks started the second half right off where the ended the first half, scoring the first six points en route to building a 10-point lead.

The Jazz countered with a 7-0 run on a Carlos Boozer dunk, free throws by Paul Millsap and Ronnie Brewer, and a leaner by Ronnie Price to get back into the contest.

Utah then got a big boost heading into the fourth quarter on back-to-back fast-break buckets — a break-away dunk by Brewer and a Price-to-Boozer layup with less than a second left in the third — to only trail by two heading into the fourth.

Boozer had a couple of strong inside baskets followed by a Miles free throw and a nice drive by Price as Utah went on a 7-0 run to take an 89-83 lead with 5:15 remaining.

Milwaukee, which lost the night before to Denver, dropped to 5-8 on the season.

Richard Jefferson led the Bucks with 25 points and former Ute Andrew Bogut had 16 points and 20 rebounds in the loss.

E-mail: jody@desnews.com