Utah Jazz: Big bounce back to beat Bobcats

CHARLOTTE — No apologies needed.

Not Saturday night, when the Jazz — unlike Friday's debacle in Atlanta — figured out a way.

A way, that is, to win.

Utah held on in the fourth quarter to beat Charlotte 110-102 at Time Warner Cable Arena here, doing it behind double-doubles from both Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer.

"It feels good, to know we can come out after an embarrassing loss like that and battle," said Williams, who publicly apologized after Friday's game for both his own and the team's poor play.

"That wasn't even a loss," Boozer added with reference to a 13-point defeat to Atlanta in which the Jazz trailed by as many as 32 points in the third quarter and coach Jerry Sloan benched four of his five starters — including both Boozer and Williams. "That was something extra than that. I mean, it was worse than a loss. But we came back (Saturday night) and fought our tails off."

Williams had a team-high 23 points and game-high 11 assists, and Boozer scored 22 while pulling down a team-high 11 rebounds.

That's the very same pair that combined for just eight points — two from Williams, six by Boozer — and eight turnovers in Atlanta.

The 16-11 Jazz — now 2-1 three stops into a five-game pre-Christmas trip that continues Monday night at Orlando — also got 18 points off the bench from backup power forward Paul Millsap and 20 from C.J. Miles, who replaced rookie shooting guard Wesley Matthews in Utah's lineup for the start of Saturday's second half.

"The most encouraging thing, from our standpoint, is that we came back after a loss like (Friday) night and it looked like we had a little bit more energy to play," said Sloan, whose club — now 10-1 coming off losses this season — has won 12 of its last 16 games.

"It looked like we passed the ball a great deal more," he added after a 31-assist night.

"We turned it over some (21 times, including six miscues by Williams), but at least I thought we had more energy."

The Jazz led by eight points heading into the fourth quarter, but got some much-needed distance with a 12-2 run at the start of the period that included a Mehmet Okur layup, two Millsap free throws, a Miles jumper and free throw and a Millsap jumper before being capped by a Williams three-point play the old-fashioned way.

Williams scored from under the basket off a feed from Okur, than hit the freebie that followed to put Utah up 95-77 with just more than eight minutes to go.

Twice in the next two minutes, the Jazz led by as many as 19 over a 10-15 Bobcats club that came into the night 9-3 at home.